Re: Digital Bazaar corporate position on upcoming election

On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 10:57 AM Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
wrote:

> We are stating this on this mailing list to ensure that it is in the
> public record. I realize that this may come across as being overly
> concerned about a simple community vote. Nevertheless, this vote is
> setting a precedent and we want to make sure that we are being
> upstanding citizens in all communities in which we are involved. We also
> recognize that other corporations in this group may not choose to do
> this, and that is their choice.
>

Manu & Digital Bazaar team:

Thank you very much for your openness and sharing on this issue.

The co-chairs realized very late (after charter update, after announcement
of election) that there was not a solid definition of "member". Neither the
W3C in their documents, nor our charter is clear on it.

I know for myself, as someone coming from the IETF, that I appreciated the
strong meme and spirit (if sometimes not the practice) of always
representing yourself, not your organization. However, that does not really
quite exist in our community.

In the end, the co-chairs went with how the registration process works at
the CCG level — we by default can register in CCG as individuals, not as
affiliates of our companies. The CCG membership database works this way.
However, I believe all three of us felt there were unintended consequences
in both directions.

Not only do I suggest this as a topic for discussion for updating our
charter (which is now easier to change), I also have become uncomfortable
about what has become a binary choice. I think we should also have
considered having the election be the person with the most approval, where
members could approve all or only a few. This too may have unintended
consequences. Right now the chairs get to choose the form of the election.

We also tried to find a service to do the election for us, but since only
members can vote, and membership was not defined. Thus we had to do the
clunky method we are doing this time for what should be a simple election.

— Christopher Allen