Re: Suggested response to the Yandex "cannot iive with loosening of TAG participation requiremens"

catching up on an overnight burst of traffic, responding to multiple messages.

> On Apr 13, 2015, at 18:40 , Daniel Glazman <daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com> wrote:
> 
> On 13/04/15 17:36, David Singer wrote:
> 
>> What we wanted was that if someone changed allegiance, we (a) did not force a special election but (b) any >1 seat count for their employer would last no longer than until the next election. How the company resolves this — resignation, who resigns, when, term endings, etc. — is up to them.
> 
> "we"? Who's that "we"? Not me.

The people who made this proposal, who thrashed out this middle position between ‘no resignation’ and ‘immediate resignation’.

> 
> Speak for yourself, Dave. It was never my goal and I think I'm the one
> who originally started all this discussion on the election after Alex's
> issue. My goal is to avoid a forced resignation, that I find a scandal
> and have always found a scandal. Read it again: a scandal.

Thank you for the colorful language.  I would find it a scandal to have a large company have heavy influence on the TAG for up to two years.

> 
> The prose says the issue should be solved before the election.

No, it doesn’t.  It says it has to be resolved at the end of the election.  "At the completion of the next regularly scheduled election for the TAG, the Member organization MUST have returned to having at most one participant."

> So the
> only way to do that is to make the extra seat's holder resign. *EXACTLY*
> the original issue, the original complaint from Alex, my original
> followup.

No.  If the term of one of them expires at this election, no-one has to resign.

> It's totally abnormal to force a resignation from someone
> who was elected, and it's a negation of ACs' sovereign vote.

No, it’s not. They took an action that disqualified them. That is quite normal.  If they leave the www ecosystem, change field of employment, so they are no longer employed by a member company and there is no support for them being an IE, they would have to resign as well.

> The Member company that acquired the extra seat holder's employer will
> force that individual to resign. Which is completely silly BECAUSE IF
> THE INDIVIDUAL LEAVES THE COMPANY, HE/SHE CAN RETAIN THE SEAT BEING
> UNAFFILIATED! Even worse, an extra seat's holder leaving the company,
> but contracting for that company, will retain the seat... Ooops.
> 
> I'll do my best to block the current proposed prose, at all decision
> levels. It's severely suboptimal, ambiguous process-wise, and does not
> solve the original issue.

On the contrary, it avoids special elections, it’s clear, and no longer forces immediate resignation. I’m sorry you continue to misunderstand it.

>> That’s the theory, and I encourage you to read the previous comments to understand the concerns about this in practice.
> 
> Well I think it should be the practice. So if it's really only
> the theory, there's still a lot of work on the radar.



> 
> On Apr 13, 2015, at 19:27 , Brian Kardell <bkardell@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> If there are people who get elected to TAG and switch employers after
> some time, we should let them finish the term they were elected to
> IMO.  I don't see anything in this which personally causes me to
> question the institution - it seems like it will mostly take care of
> itself if you have reasonable constraints on the elections themselves.

No, sorry.  That could lead to a situation where a single company has more than one representative for up to two years, which is too long in my opinion. The furthest I was willing to go is up to one year.  If people cannot live with that, then I suspect we’ll end up having no consensus to change, which is that we’ll continue to require immediate resignation.


On Apr 13, 2015, at 21:36 , Daniel Glazman <daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com> wrote:

> An individual may be nominated by a Member, without being employed by
> any Member, and NOT contracting for them (I think Domenic employee of
> Lab49 and nominated by jQuery Foundation was in that case). Suppose
> that Member already has a TAG seat. Refused? If not and if the
> individual is elected but then starts some contracting for the Member,
> refused? So a a Web specialist doing service for living and elected to
> the TAG should refuse all contracts with all other TAG Members? That
> would shut down a very large part of his market, right?
> 

I think you are raising an orthogonal point.  I believe that the current process is that it assumes (but does not clearly state) that it has to be the employer of someone that does the nomination.  I agree we should look at that and make sure that the text is clear, and the situations with contractors etc. be clarified to the extent needed.

> 
> On Apr 13, 2015, at 23:13 , chaals@yandex-team.ru wrote:
> 
> I would also be surprised at any suggestion that people elected to the TAG consciously used their position to benefit their employer, if they thought that conflicted with the good of the Web. Which is important. We are dealing here with individuals of both skill and integrity.

Happily, I don’t believe that anyone is impugning integrity. However, when you work in a company, not surprisingly, the company’s thinking and position rub off on you. People are also quite good at convincing themselves that what they think is e.g. for the good of the web. I regret also that some employers can be quite directive, quite forceful in what their employees do. The employee may be given a choice between getting censured by the company that pays them, or being criticized by some at the W3C. The pay-check will have some…weight…in that equation.


David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.