[cabfpub] Ballot 206 comments

[Gervase Markham]

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?

* 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?

* 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?

* 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.

* 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.

* 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?

* "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...

* 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