[OpenID board] The Specs Council and Process (WAS: Re: Executive Committee meeting 12/18/2008 ...)

Thu Dec 18 17:03:14 UTC 2008

David:

1) Yes, we need to improve the process

2) We need to work with the current process until we have it improved.

3) Please create the specs-council list so that we can archive our  
conversations and we can approve the outstanding WG. The holidays are  
almost upon us!

-- Dick

On 17-Dec-08, at 9:22 AM, David Recordon wrote:

> Yeah, this is something we're working on taking care of.  Right now
> the challenge is:
>  - There are a few proposals for working groups with very little
> consensus among the community around any of them
>  - Most of the working group proposals are still drafts
>  - Mike Jones has a thread going with other specs council members
> about how we need to respond to these proposals
>  - The specs council does not currently have a mailing list and there
> is a struggle between creating another low traffic list versus using
> an existing list.  I've been asked to make a list, which I can do,
> though there is little to no consensus that we should do so
>
> I then personally have a larger struggle with the process in place.  I
> strongly believe that it does not do good for OpenID to have it pushed
> in divergent technical directions (we've seen what happened with 2.0
> as it tried to please everyone) though feel that the community has
> very little power to prevent that.  While I could drive toward
> consensus on the specs@ mailing list that a proposal still needs
> changes to fit along with the direction of OpenID, technically the
> specs council would be hard pressed to use that as a reason to not
> approve a working group.
>
> The specs council is given a list of four reasons that it can not
> approve a new working group.  To take a lack of consensus on the
> specs@ mailing list as input, it would have to decide  either "that
> the proposal contravenes the OpenID community’s purpose" (where the
> Foundation says "OpenID is a set of freely available enabling
> technologies that facilitate individuals to use their identity and
> profile from one web resource to access many others in a
> decentralized, secure, and easy fashion built upon existing web
> technologies.") or "that the proposed WG does not have sufficient
> support to succeed or to deliver proposed deliverables within
> projected completion dates."  While significant part of the technical
> community might disagree with a working group proposal, I don't see
> there being a way (as a member of the specs council) to in good faith
> decide that it contravenes the purpose or except in extremely grave
> cases that it would not succeed.
>
> From there the proposal goes to a vote of the membership which is
> structured in such a way as to pass with a quorum requirement of 20%
> of the membership or 20 members, whichever is greater, and a simple
> majority vote.
>
> Beyond all of that, the quickest that a working group can be formed is
> no more than 15 days of review by the specs council (which we're
> failing at right now), plus a 14 day notice period of the membership
> vote, plus a 7 day voting period.  This thus means that by our current
> process it takes approximately a month for new work to begin.
>
> From there, the fastest that a working group could produce a final
> specification is theoretically 120 days.  The IPR Process requires a
> review period of at least 60 days (which PAPE is going through right
> now) for a final specification.  From there, assuming that no one
> objects around IPR or the board for legal liability, a 45 day review
> period for the membership of the Foundation is started which results
> in a 14 day voting period to approval the specification and officially
> call it "OpenID <something>".  This thus means that from the day the
> working group feels they have their final draft, it will take 119 days
> (~4 months) for the specification to go through all of the needed IPR
> review steps.
>
> I know that I was intimately involved in creating this process but the
> more that I see it in practice, the more that I know we must change it
> and understand why new innovative work like the OpenID and OAuth
> Hybrid occurs outside the purview of the OpenID Foundation.  (And yes,
> I understand how I'm being a bit hypocritical by saying that getting
> started should be easier yet only for the work that a core group feels
> fits into what OpenID is which can be done in many different ways.)
>
> I guess my point is that we need to make it much easier to get
> started, though make sure it is hard for something to be called
> "OpenID" when it clearly doesn't use existing OpenID technology or
> does something wildly different.  Right now our process is loaded up
> at the start and at the end, which means that people are going and
> starting elsewhere.
>
> --David
>
> On Dec 17, 2008, at 8:09 AM, Scott Kveton wrote:
>
>>> It might not be the board issue, but there are several WG proosals
>>> sitting there. According to the OpenID process, spec comittee needs
>>> issue a recomendatiom within two weeks so that the working group
>>> creation voting can take place.
>>
>> Is this something for the specifications council?:
>>
>> http://wiki.openid.net/OpenID_Foundation/SC
>>
>> I believe this is out of scope for the Exec. Committee.
>>
>> - Scott
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> =nat at TOKYO via iPhone
>>>
>>> On 2008/12/18, at 0:41, "Scott Kveton" <scott at kveton.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Unless anyone has anything particularly pressing to discuss, I'd
>>>> like
>>>> to cancel the Executive Committee meeting scheduled for tomorrow at
>>>> 11am PST.
>>>>
>>>> If there is something you'd like to discuss and still feel like we
>>>> need a meeting, by all means, let me know and we can rethink.
>>>>
>>>> FYI,
>>>>
>>>> - Scott
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> board at openid.net
>>>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/board
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>>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/board
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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