[cabf_governance] Ballot 206 comments

[Dean Coclin]

Here is where we ended up today, reviewing these comments:

-----Original Message-----
From: Public [mailto:public-bounces at cabforum.org] On Behalf Of Gervase Markham via Public
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2017 11:49 AM
To: CABFPub <public at cabforum.org>
Subject: [cabfpub] Ballot 206 comments

My thanks to the hard-working members of the Governance WG. I hope these comments do not come too late. I have not yet been able to persuade my counsel to look at the IPR agreement.

Here are my thoughts:

* The base version of the Bylaws you have used appears to be version 1.6. This is indeed the latest version on the website, but it's not the latest version - the latest would include the changes in ballot 205, which passed on 7th of July. Please can you rebase your changes on top of the most recent version, and (probably) renumber your version as a proposed 1.8?
>>Ben is taking care of this

* The changes from ballot 205 may well need tweaking in light of the new membership rules and categories, and how Forum membership and WG membership are separated. Have you yet considered this?
>>Will review again once above is done

* Membership: so the idea for the non-CA category is that the set of companies/people eligible to join the Forum as a whole consists of anyone who fits the criteria for one or more existing Working Groups, plus anyone who "produces a software product intended for use by the general public for browsing the Web securely"? What happens if a WG is closed down and a member thereby no longer qualifies for Forum membership, because the WG whose membership rules allowed them in has gone?
>>Discussion ensued on whether this is true or not. Andrew/Virginia/Jos/Ben stated that the Forum level should be the Union of all WGs. Dean - not sure
If WG ceases, Forum membership ceases, but can become IP

* Would it be a good idea in section 5.3.3 to explicitly say that when a Working Group adopts Final Guidelines and Final Maintenance Guidelines, the only people who are eligible to vote on them are the members of the Working Group? You haven't made any changes to section 2.2, particularly 2.2b), and so one could get the impression that the Working Group does the work, but all Members can vote on adoption.
>>WG votes on its own work and will clarify 2.3b

* What happens to existing Working Groups when these bylaws come into effect? Nothing seems to define that. Do they evaporate? Or still exist, even though they aren't chartered in the way prescribed by the current Bylaws? Or something else? I suggest we say explicitly in ballot 206.
>>Policy, Governance, Validation are the current groups. These WGs should be sunsetted after a period of time (6 mos) and would need a new charter balloted. 

* It's also not clear what happens to existing documents. Presumably they need to be transferred into the "ownership" of a Working Group, such that the IPR policy relating to that document only applies to WG members from then on. Would that be something done by the chartering ballot?
>>Develop a chart of documents currently maintained and who would take them over. If no new owner, call them "legacy" docs until new owner (working group) is established.

* "A Working Group may also include Interested Parties and Associate Members." Note "may". Is it permissible for a Working Group to exclude such people? I'm not sure we should allow that...
>>This is permissive language. The charter will determine who will be in the working group. If people don't like it, they can vote against it.


STOP HERE 8/29/17

* The draft removes the requirement that Working Group mailing lists "must be managed in the same fashion as the Public Mail List". This requirement, although perhaps needing generalization, is an important part of the Forum's transparency, and its loss is a significant matter.
How can it be best reinstated such that it applies appropriately to the means of communication employed by Working Groups?

There was talk at some point of having a list of approved means of communication, and requiring a Bylaw amendment to add to the list (at which time, such means could be scrutinised for appropriateness in this and other regards). I still think there is value in that.

* The new section 3 of ballot 206 deals with ballots in the Review Period, but not ballots in the Voting Period. It's quite possible there might be such a ballot on the day that ballot 206 exits IPR review (or otherwise comes into effect, according to Kirk's amendment to section 3). It might be worth making sure we have covered all bases here, including Voting Period and Discussion Period.

* I support the idea of Kirk's amendment to section 3; it makes sense for the new documents to not come into effect until everything is in place for us to continue operating as now. However, it does create a chicken and egg problem - if those documents are not in effect, then the ballot chartering a new Working Group would be chartering an old-style Working Group, not a new-style one!

I'm not sure how best to fix this. We can't run an extra ballot in parallel, as that would also be under the old rules. Can we extend ballot 206 to include the formation of a Web Server Working Group, and say "this WG is formed under the rules being approved by this ballot", or does that also cause problems? If there is no fix, we may need a 2-week work hiatus.

Gerv
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