TCOS Rules&Regs and IR Voting

[Stephen R. Walli]

There's a Mini Ballot attached to the latest circulation of the TCOS/SSC
Operating Procedures. It has to do with the removal of voting privileges from 
the Institutional Representatives. I'm posting this set of ponderings because
I want to understand why IRs shouldn't have voting privileges. I need some
education here. 

- I don't like the fact that they recast the current voting situation into a 
  "no" vote situation in the text, then asked for guidance.

- Let's look at the IRs. 

  USENIX, Uniforum, EurOpen, GUIDE, DECUS
  ---------------------------------------
  There are user groups which for the most part are financially accessible to 
  the average technical person, regardless of their employer, in a similar 
  way to the IEEE and IEEE/CS. 

  X/Open, OSF, UI
  ---------------
  There's the vendor consortia. These are not-for-profit (revenue neutral,
  non-profit, etc.) organizations with membership fees WELL outside of the 
  individual. The high cost of membership provides members with a different 
  set of benefits, such as early access to source code of the products 
  built by these organizations. (I realize this doesn't apply to X/Open. I'm 
  not sure what the return for their high cost of admission is.) 

  IRs represent both user communities and vendor (producer) communities. 
  This fits the multiple viewpoint policy of balloting groups within the 
  IEEE. 

- TCOS/SEC is responsible for the business/financial side of the standards
  budget, and the creation and policing of WGs and Steering Committees. The 
  IRs represent their communities (vendor and user) at the policy level the 
  same way that individual members represent those viewpoints at the technical
  level within a WG. This is why IRs should be voting members. It is a 
  continuation of the open standards process that is a pillar of the IEEE 
  standards platform. 

  (Chairpeople are responsible for their individual projects, and are not 
  responsible for TCOS/SEC policy co-ordination with their WG.)

- The "Them" (IRs) outnumbering "Us" ("... individual professional members 
  of the IEEE...") phrasing in the Mini Ballot is a little inflamatory. 
  My guess is that most of the IRs are members of the IEEE anyway, since 
  they are involved and are probably balloting members. I would 
  hope there isn't a suggestion that IRs are unprofessional in this statement. 
  There are by my count, 17 chairpeople, plus 4 steering committees, plus
  TCOS/SEC officers. There are 8 IRs. The proliferation of project WGs and 
  necessary steering committees seems to be faster than new IR acceptance. 
  Besides, it's not a numbers game. 

- This next point does not involve the IR voting status, but illustrates a 
  point. Somewhere along the line, it was decided that IRs with the ability to 
  ballot draft documents would receive "special" status. While their ballots
  do not weigh any heavier for consideration, their names are published 
  seperately at the front of the standard as IRs. Somewhere in the standards
  acceptance heirarchy, people feel it is important to draw attention to these
  institutions in the acceptance of the standard. It somehow seems 
  inappropriate that they do not carry voting weight within the policy world
  of TCOS/SEC.  

So what am I missing? Why shouldn't IRs have the vote? 

Disclaimer:
The above opinions are strictly my own, and since I work for myself, they 
also represent my company's. People still love to disagree with them and 
correct them along the way. 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Stephen R. Walli                               SRW Software 
phone: (416) 579 0304                          572 Foxrun Court,
fax:   (416) 571 1991                          Oshawa, Ontario, Canada,
speaker!stephe at mks.com   -OR-                  L1K 1N9
uunet!watmath!mks!speaker!stephe
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[ Note followup's, please -- mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 24, Number 20