(j3.2006) Fwd: Call for Comments - On Draft Proposed INCITS Membership Agreement - Comments Due by Friday, September 6, 2013

[Bill Long]

After the first mark-up (discussions ongoing) by the internal lawyers, 
I'm pretty confident that corporate participation in INCITS activities 
would end if this agreement is not withdrawn or modified significantly. 
  Note that this agreement is actually very long because of other 
documents [we're guessing are] incorporated by reference. 
(www.incits.org/policies does not exist.)

It would help if it was clearer what they consider a "deliverable". 
Our main deliverable documents actually go to ISO (WG5),  eventually 
coming back to ANSI as proposed US standards.  So, it seems that the 
deliverable to ANSI is basically TAG meeting minutes, votes on ISO 
documents becoming ANSI standards, and maybe the PL22.3 meeting minutes. 
  That might be manageable, since there is only one author involved. 
Asking for every meeting paper to be cleared by corporate copyright 
committees is unrealistic. So I hope each of those is not considered a 
deliverable.

The 'we can change the rules at any time' bit drew some attention as 
well.   I think Van has a good point.

Cheers,
Bill



On 8/8/13 2:02 PM, Van Snyder wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-08-08 at 04:28 -0700, Dan Nagle wrote:
>>
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: "Barra, Lynn" <lbarra at itic.org>
>>>
>>> Subject: Call for Comments - On Draft Proposed INCITS Membership
>>> Agreement - Comments Due by Friday, September 6, 2013
>
> INCITS recently remarked that it is becoming increasingly difficult for
> members to convince employers of the benefit of participation in
> standards activities.  Then, almost in the same breath, we have this new
> "agreement" from INCITS, which isn't helpful to that cause, and might be
> hurtful.
>
> Most of it is reasonable boilerplate, but subclause 2.3, the part about
> being bound by future INCITS edicts that have not yet been published,
> might be difficult for some employers, especially governments or those
> funded by governments.  It might be easier for such employers to join
> the agreement if the "no refund" clause is amended to except resignation
> resulting from unilateral INCITS changes to the agreement, perhaps
> stipulating pro rata refund in those cases.
>
> Alternatively, a new membership agreement should be affirmed when yearly
> fees are paid, and the agreement should not include a provision to add
> unilateral conditions during the year.
>

-- 
Bill Long                                           longb at cray.com
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