DRAFT: POLICIES AND PROCESSES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF OASIS TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS (Known for purposes of discussion as "The Process Outline") Jon Bosak Los Altos, California 1999.11.01 STATUS OF THIS DOCUMENT This document is a draft in progress intended for input to the OASIS Work Process Committee. The previous version of this draft received an initial sanity check by the OASIS Board of Directors in its meeting of 5 October 1999 in London; this draft incorporates input provided during that meeting. PURPOSE This document is intended to evolve into a complete definition of the process to be followed in developing technical specifications within the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT OASIS is a Pennsylvania non-profit corporation, and all decisions of that corporation are vested in its Board of Directors, who are chosen by ballot as specified in the Bylaws of the Corporation. The Bylaws distinguish between voting and nonvoting members, and they allow the OASIS board to institute membership levels in such a way that some levels of membership are in the voting category and some are in the nonvoting category. At the time of this writing, the voting members of OASIS belong to the various levels of membership reserved for organizations, while individuals have nonvoting memberships. "Voting" in this context simply means the right to vote in the appointment of Directors; voting on other questions generally occurs only when the Directors determine to use a vote of the membership in deciding them. The procedures described in this document shall become effective only when formally adopted by the OASIS board or by the OASIS membership. BASIC ASSUMPTIONS The procedures set forth in this document for the creation of OASIS technical specifications are based upon the following assumptions. 1. That there is an established OASIS policy for intellectual property that allows free, nondiscriminatory use of specifications developed under this process. Such a policy has yet to be defined; see [ipr] for a current placeholder. 2. That there is an established set of OASIS antitrust guidelines. The policies embodied in this process relating to the visibility of technical committee work reflect the antitrust guidelines assumed to be in place; see [atrust] for the guidelines assumed to be operational for purposes of the present document. Note that the visibility requirements for technical committees in the currently assumed antitrust guidelines are presumed not to apply to the separate pre-charter phase (see overview below) in which requirements are gathered within an industry. 3. That participation in all chartered OASIS technical committees is open to all OASIS members and that their work is open to public view (though not to public participation). 4. That OASIS technical specifications do not attempt to define core technologies such as XML but rather to create industrial applications of core technologies. This is critical to the organization of the technical process specified in this document, because it allows multiple overlapping (or even directly competing) OASIS specifications to exist with minimal risk of operational collision. 5. That once created, OASIS technical committees are largely autonomous and that as a general rule they are not burdened with reviewing each other's work in progress. This means that other mechanisms are assumed to be available to the board, or to some person or group to which it delegates the responsibility, for preventing (presumably rare) genuine conflicts between parallel technical efforts. Examples of such mechanisms could include joint meetings of technical committees, task forces appointed by the board to analyze an apparent conflict and recommend action, workshops organized by the board to explore particular questions, or direct intervention by the board. More formal mechanisms such as voluntary coordination committees and joint subcommittees may be specified in a later stage of development of this process. 6. That in the general case, all resources for the work of OASIS technical committees are contributed by participants. This means that in the general case, minimum levels of commitment must be secured before activities can be started. (There is nothing to prevent the OASIS Board from providing resources for specific items of work, but the normal OASIS technical process is designed to prevent OASIS resource constraints from limiting the number of industry-specific activities that can take place at a given time.) 7. That the ordinary role of the OASIS board in the technical specification process is to make overall policy decisions and that in the general case it does not attempt to manage committee work or to second-guess committee decisions, though it always has the authority to do so. 8. That the function of the OASIS staff is to help out with logistics and to otherwise stay out of the way. 9. That formal committee decisions are made by formal vote according to formal methods. It is a foundational precept of the OASIS technical specification process that "consensus" is the breath of life in the creation of standards but the kiss of death in specifying procedures for making decisions. To put this in operational terms, chairs of technical committees should never be prevented from holding yet another straw poll in an attempt to find a consensus, but they should always be able to force an unambiguous decision via a determinate and non-arbitrary process when it is time to move on. 10. That revisions to OASIS technical specifications are considered to be new specifications and that they follow the same process as for new specifications. OVERVIEW OF THE OASIS TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION PROCESS The successful creation of standards depends on finding a balance between the need to incorporate the widest range of differing opinions and experiences in the design phase and the need to move with decision and finality in the approval phase. Several models have been developed by different standards bodies in an attempt to find this balance. For example, some organizations vest final authority in a single individual, with all the decisions made by technical committees serving merely as advice to that individual. Other organizations take an approach nearly opposite to this, with all decisions made by consensus of the participants. Still others confer final approval through a process of balloting by a federation of subsidiary organizations whose constitution and methods of operation are individually determined. The creation of standard specifications for structured information exchange is further complicated by the need to ensure that the requirements for specifications in each domain are set primarily by users in that domain, typically by organizations that intend to use the specification for information interchange within a particular industry. It is essential to the success of such initiatives that they be driven more by the practical needs of their intended users than by purely theoretical considerations and that basic goals agreed to at the beginning of an effort not be vitiated by a futile or dilatory recursion to a reconsideration of those goals while design is in progress. Yet another dimension of complexity is added to the OASIS specification process by the fact that not all OASIS projects will have originated wholly within OASIS; the process must also accommodate the adoption of projects started in other industry groups and the harmonization of multiple projects initiated by different groups to solve similar problems within a common domain. The method adopted here for merging projects with variant beginnings into a common process is to modularize the phases of the process and to structure the earlier phases in a way that provides normalized inputs to the later phases, following an approach that in the design of computer software is sometimes called "pipelining." A final consideration in the design of the specification process is the practical difficulty of managing a theoretically unlimited number of industry-specific standards efforts without requiring more of the participants in each effort than the work needed to implement information exchange agreements within their industry and without placing an undue burden on OASIS as an organization. This suggests a system in which resources are allocated from the bottom up and which depends heavily on principles of voluntary association. The normal OASIS specification process can briefly be described as follows. (Note that this description is intended to provide an informal orientation to the process; procedural details are specified separately. The term "board" refers to the OASIS Board of Directors.) PHASE 1: PREPARING TO INCORPORATE AN OASIS ACTIVITY This optional preparatory phase applies when it is proposed to adopt an existing specification effort into OASIS or to use the OASIS process for the harmonization of multiple pre-existing specification efforts. In the case of harmonization efforts, a process for proposing and conducting industry unification conferences applies at this stage. PHASE 2: PROPOSING AN OASIS ACTIVITY In this phase, a group of OASIS members (individuals or organizations) meeting a specified set of criteria submits an activity proposal to the board stating the problem to be solved and containing (a) an abstract of a strategy for solving the problem by means of one or more OASIS specifications and (b) a list of OASIS members committed to fulfilling certain specified roles (convenor, requirements editor, etc.) in the development of a charter for a committee to carry out the activity. This phase and the ones that follow are essentially the same regardless of whether the activity originated within OASIS or outside of it. Note that acceptance by the board of a proposal to form a charter does not imply approval of the proposed activity but simply licenses the interested parties to hold meetings for the purpose of developing a proposed charter in enough detail to be considered. The board may itself initiate an activity proposal by appointing a set of persons meeting the criteria for a proposal group and asking them to submit the proposal. Note also that this phase need not be publicly visible. PHASE 3: CHARTERING AN OASIS TECHNICAL COMMITTEE Upon acceptance of the activity proposal by the board, the convenor named in the proposal assembles the persons specified in the proposal, together with such other participants as he or she may designate, in a series of meetings whose purpose is to create the charter for an OASIS technical committee and to define a set of functional requirements that must be met by the specifications produced by the proposed committee. Participation in this phase of the process may be limited to specific individuals deemed best qualified to create the charter and to define the activity requirements, and the group may call upon individuals or organizations outside of OASIS for information contributing to its goal. Since this phase creates no specifications, the deliberations of the group formed to draft the committee charter and to define functional requirements need not be exposed to persons outside the group. PHASE 4: PROPOSING AN OASIS TECHNICAL COMMITTEE No matter what its origin, a proposal to form an OASIS technical committee (TC) contains three basic elements: an activity charter, including background, mission, and deliverables; a definition of functional requirements to be met by the specification(s) developed by the TC; and a list of OASIS members initially committed to the work, including at least one person willing to perform the duties of TC chair and at least one other person willing to perform the duties of specification editor for each specification proposed as part of the activity. These people need not have served in corresponding roles during the previous phase or even have participated in that phase. PHASE 5: DESIGNING OASIS SPECIFICATIONS A TC creates one or more specifications sufficient to fulfill the requirements defined in the charter phase according to procedures set forth in detail elsewhere in this document. TCs are open to any individual OASIS member and to any employee of an OASIS member organization who maintains a minimum level of participation in the work, and they are closed to participation by any other person. The committee's progress is evidenced by its mailing list, working drafts, notes, and other publicly visible manifestations. Note that (a) no provision is made in this process for invited experts, since OASIS membership is available to any individual for a reasonable annual fee, and that (b) no provision is made for the establishment of associated interest groups; the charters, requirements, mailing lists, and working drafts of an OASIS TC being open to public view, its work may be discussed anywhere. (In the case of TC mailing lists, "open" means only that the mail archive is world-readable. The right to receive mail as it is generated and to post to an OASIS TC mailing list are privileges of OASIS membership not available to the general public.) PHASE 6: COMPLETING AN OASIS SPECIFICATION A TC signifies the completion of an item of work by formally approving a final draft specification and passing it on to the board. The OASIS Secretary (an officer of the corporation) assigns the specification a tracking number. A numbered OASIS specification that has passed out of committee but has not been formally approved by OASIS is called an OASIS committee specification (CS). The idea of CS status is an especially important feature of the OASIS technical specification process. The assignment of a CS number is a public statement that a specification is ready for initial implementation but has not yet attained the status of an OASIS technical resolution. A CS is a specification that has received the formal approval of the committee that created it, which depends on a vote of the committee's members in good standing and signifies that the group of interested and presumably expert *individuals* who have participated in the work believe that their work is now ready for use. But it is not something that represents OASIS itself, which, as described below, requires a vote of the *organizations* having voting membership at the OASIS level (or an extraordinary emergency action by the OASIS board). In conjunction with the fact that the cost of a TC effort is in the general case borne entirely by its participants, this means that data exchange requirements in particular industries can quickly be met through a potentially unlimited number of domain-specific data exchange specifications at the initiative of relatively small groups of OASIS members (organizations or individuals) and can achieve CS status entirely on the authority of the participants in each TC without requiring centralized management or coordination, as long as each such initiative follows the rules set forth in the process description. PHASE 7: BOARD REVIEW As with all formal decisions of OASIS as a non-profit corporation, the disposition of a CS is legally at the discretion of the OASIS board. Actions that the board can take range in theory (and under extraordinary circumstances, in practice) from immediate approval at one extreme to outright repudiation at the other, with stages in between that can conceivably include the return of a CS to its originating TC with instructions, the dissolution of the TC without a replacement, or the creation of a new TC to continue working with new membership and/or a new set of directions. In the ordinary course of events, however, the board will typically wait for some amount of comment or implementation experience and then either refer the CS back to the originating TC for revision in the light of experience or proceed to schedule an OASIS vote to approve the specification as an OASIS technical resolution. PHASE 8: OASIS REVIEW When, in the judgement of the board, a CS is ready for review by OASIS as a whole, a process (described in detail below) is set in motion that culminates in a vote by the OASIS membership. If the specification is approved by the membership, it becomes an OASIS technical resolution (TR). Note again that the vote to approve a TR counts the number of OASIS member organizations favoring the adoption of the resolution and is fundamentally different from the vote to approve a committee specification, which counts the number of individuals on the committee favoring public implementation of the specification, regardless of their organizational affiliation. It is possible and, indeed, anticipated that some committee specifications may be adopted for limited use within particular industries without ever achieving the status of OASIS technical resolutions. PHASE 9: INTERNATIONAL STANDARDIZATION If the board judges an approved technical resolution to have an appropriate level of importance, stability, and breadth of implementation, the Board may submit the specification to a relevant ISO committee with a request that it be considered for approval as an International Standard. ================================================================== [The actual process in detail goes here. In this draft, it's just a collection of points that need to be covered by the OASIS Work Process Committee.] 1. Preparing to incorporate an OASIS activity a. Adopting an existing XML specification effort Form of application from an organization requesting the adoption of an XML specification effort -- form of an invitation from OASIS to adopt an XML specification effort -- preparing an activity proposal (input to next phase) b. Harmonizing multiple XML specification efforts Proposing an industry harmonization meeting -- choosing a convenor -- receiving bids from member organizations to host the event -- choosing a host -- conducting the meeting -- deliverables -- preparing an activity proposal (input to the next phase) -- convenor's role ends at the end of this phase 2. Proposing an OASIS activity Statement of the problem to be solved -- statement of a solution strategy -- commitment of individuals to fulfill chartering roles (convenor, requirements editor, charter editor, domain experts) -- minimum number of commitments needed for consideration of a proposal -- submission to the Board -- publication to OASIS membership -- period to receive comments from the membership -- disposition of comments from the membership not required -- Board may request changes -- no time limit on Board consideration 3. Chartering an OASIS technical committee Charter process vs. committee process -- time limit on charter process -- task of the charter group -- role of the convenor -- inviting participants beyond those enumerated in the proposal approved by the Board -- dealing with defections from the list of committed participants -- arranging meetings and phone conferences -- process for making decisions -- deciding whether to use a public mailing list -- deciding whether and how to poll outside groups for requirements -- meaning of "functional requirement" -- what parts of the standard procedures for TC operation [if any] can be overridden, extended, or otherwise modified by individual TC charters -- possibility that the charter group will find that the time isn't right to begin a TC, or that the work should be handed off to another group inside or outside of OASIS, or that the work should not be undertaken at all 4. Proposing an OASIS technical committee Proposal checklist (background, mission, deliverables, process deltas, requirements, mandatory commitments of participation) -- form of proposal -- submission to the Board -- publication to OASIS membership -- period to receive comments from the membership -- disposition of comments from the membership not required -- Board may request changes -- no time limit on Board consideration -- publication of Board decision -- process if approved: appointment of chair or co-chairs; scheduling first meeting; call for participation 5. Procedures for OASIS technical committees Basic procedures: meetings, decisions, publications, etc. -- straw polls vs. formal votes -- process for recording opinions dissenting from the majority -- quorum (which can in theory be accomplished indirectly through a requirement that a certain percentage of the participants in good standing must cast votes in formal decisions) -- notification policies (meetings, votes, etc.) -- responsibility for hosting meetings: who and how often -- mailing lists and archives; policies with regard to response time; changes to this policy on weekends, holidays, vacation periods -- form of minutes, resolutions, etc.; minimum is decision + rationale -- procedures for appointing and removing chairs and editors -- requirements for participation in good standing -- procedures for removing dysfunctional members -- procedure whereby the Board can terminate a TC -- procedure for sizing down a TC that has grown too large to function effectively -- forms of documents, especially with regard to possible later ISO publication -- normative references, e.g., which version of XML Schema to use -- procedures for convening joint meetings of TCs -- procedures for holding workshops on specific questions -- procedures for creating editorial teams and task forces -- procedures for conflict resolution -- maintaining order in a design process open to public view -- degree to which comments from nonmembers must be considered [this is an important open question] -- minimum requirements for continued operation of a TC -- disposition of errata after a specification is published 6. Completing an OASIS specification Procedure for approving a committee specification -- assignment of CS number -- publication of a CS -- submission to the Board 7. Board review Disposition of a CS at the discretion of the Board -- typical scenarios (hold pending experience, request usual revision in light of experience, start OASIS membership review) -- atypical scenarios (immediate acceptance, repudiation, returning to TC, dissolving TC, reconstituting TC, etc.) -- numbering -- publication 8. OASIS review Numbering -- publication -- optional submission to a vote of the membership 9. International standardization Relation between OASIS and ISO -- Class A liaison -- process for submitting OASIS specifications to ISO standardization 10. Role of the OASIS staff Paid staff prohibited from voting on TCs and from serving as group chairs REFERENCES [ipr] Placeholder for IPR policy [see below] [atrust] Placeholder for antitrust policy [see below] GOOD SUGGESTIONS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN INCORPORATED YET Dedicated archived email lists for public comment on TC work Phase 6: TC chairs should include a report on known implementations completed or in progress when conveying a CS to the board ================================================================= [This is the file ipr.100] [Note: This is a placeholder for more specific language.] IPR policy for OASIS Technical Committees OASIS exists primarily for the advancement of structured information exchange through the development of specifications licensed under terms that make their use freely available to everyone. It is not the purpose of OASIS to develop intellectual property for profit. Participants in OASIS Technical Committees do so with the express understanding that all contributions are made in common with other participants, and that while the ownership of OASIS specifications is formally vested in OASIS, all OASIS specifications are public and may be freely copied, distributed, and applied by any person or organization for any purpose without charge. ================================================================= [This is the file atrust.100] [Note: This language has not been subject to legal review. It is merely a placeholder intended to express the basic antitrust philosophy assumed to be part of the context of the proposed OASIS process for the creation of technical specifications.] ANTITRUST GUIDELINES FOR OASIS TECHNICAL COMMITTEES It is the intention of OASIS and its members to operate in compliance with the antitrust laws of the United States, and therefore all OASIS technical committees should use their best efforts to comply with those laws. In furtherance of such efforts, the following guidelines apply to all activities covered by the OASIS process for technical specifications. 1. No activity of OASIS or any of its technical committees shall be used for any of the following purposes: (a) To bring about or attempt to bring about any understanding or agreement, written or oral, formal or informal, express or implied among or between competitors or potential competitors with regard to prices, terms or conditions of sale, distribution, volume of production, territories, customers, credit terms, or marketing practices. (b) To hold discussions among or between competitors or potential competitors regarding prices, pricing methods, production plans, allocation of territories or customers, or any limitation on the timing, cost, or volume of research, production, or sales. (c) To encourage any person or business entity to refrain from dealing with any supplier, or to attempt to prevent any person or business entity from gaining access to any market or customer for goods and services, from obtaining a supply of goods or services, or from otherwise purchasing goods or services freely in the market. 2. The qualifications for membership in OASIS are set forth [[somewhere else; reference goes here]]. No applicant for membership who meets the qualifications shall be denied membership for any anti-competitive purpose or for the purpose of denying such applicant the benefits of membership. 3. Neither OASIS nor any OASIS technical committee shall attempt to construct a standard or specification for the purpose or with the effect of preventing the manufacture, sale, or supply of any product or services not conforming to a particular specification. 4. The development, approval, or recognition of any specifications by OASIS or its technical committees shall be based upon relevant technical and business considerations and shall in no way be based upon any intention to reduce or eliminate competition in the sale, supply, and furnishing of products and services. 5. Adherence to any specifications developed, approved, or recognized by OASIS or its technical committees shall be voluntary on the part of the members of OASIS and shall in no way be compelled, directed, or coerced by OASIS or any OASIS technical committee, it being solely a voluntary decision on the part of members of OASIS as to whether to adhere to or comply with any such specifications. 6. Neither OASIS nor any OASIS technical committee shall impose sanctions for the violation of, nor shall they enforce compliance with, standards or specifications developed, recognized, or approved by OASIS, except that OASIS may condition use of its trademarks on compliance with standards developed to regulate the use of and to protect such mark. 7. While participation in OASIS and its technical committees is limited to OASIS members, the substantive business of OASIS and its technical committees shall be conducted in public view. In particular: (a) All electronic mailing lists of OASIS technical committees shall be freely available on the Internet. (b) Every formal decision taken by an OASIS technical committee shall be reported on the Internet within a reasonable period of time. (c) Any document or working draft of a specification under development by an OASIS technical committee that is visible to the members of that technical committee shall at the same time be visible to the public. (d) The membership of any editorial team or task force appointed by a technical committee shall be made public upon its formation, and the products of such editorial team or task force shall be made public when reported back to the technical committee that created it. 8. All OASIS technical committees shall observe the formal procedures regarding notifications, meetings, decisions, and minutes set forth in [[the OASIS process document for the creation of technical specifications]]. 9. Each participant in an OASIS technical committee shall be supplied with a copy of these guidelines and shall agree to abide by them.