[OpenID board] Allen Tom's proposal on WG formation

Mike Jones Michael.Jones at microsoft.com
Sun Mar 1 21:31:15 UTC 2009


While this discussion has mostly been about “false positives”, I’m also concerned about the “false negative” case, which is the main reason we introduced the community vote for working group creation in the first place.  The current policy was explicitly designed so that the community could vote to create a working group, even though the specs council didn’t recommend it.  I hope there’s no disagreement that the community should have the final say in this case.

                                                                -- Mike

From: board-bounces at openid.net [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net] On Behalf Of Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.)
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 7:21 PM
To: board at openid.net
Subject: Re: [OpenID board] Allen Tom's proposal on WG formation

On 02/28/2009 03:00 AM, Martin Atkins:
Mike Jones wrote:

The problem with this proposal is that it removes the community’s voice from the spec creation process.  Our members should always be given the option to vote NOT TO create a working group as well as the option to vote TO create one.  Otherwise, a working group can be created by a very small group of insiders, without the community serving as a check & balance.

The current procedure, by design, always gives the community a voice, and the final say.  I believe we got this principle right the first time.

Your objection seems to consider that there are some disadvantages to the existance of a working group. Would you mind enumerating what you consider these to be?

As far as I can tell, the existence of a working group is mostly harmless. It consumes some resources in the sense that it has a mailing list and it requires votes to be made, but that seems like minimal overhead.

Could it be sufficient to simply vote on the final spec rather than on the creation of the working group in the first place? If the community doesn't like the result, it can veto the completed spec rather than the idea that drove that spec.

In practice, I'd expect that a working group would get a general idea of whether it is popular or not during its working phase, so some working groups may "die out" due to lack of interest before they even get to the voting phase.


I find Mike's proposal interesting. How can a spec at final approval be voted down, considering that the same mechanism is applied for approving a spec as well?
Regards



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Eddy Nigg, StartCom Ltd.<http://www.startcom.org>

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