[Tinyos-alliance] 060124 meeting notes

[Robert Szewczyk]

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David Culler
Adam Wolisz
Ramesh Govindan
Rob Szewczyk
Matt Welsh
Philippe Bonnet 

Start: IETF musings
architectural board -- longer term goals 
area directors -- responsible for working group progress, combined form a
steering committee
ISOC - corporate members

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Rob -- minutes

DC: laid out as homework - corporate structure and membership, some progress
there, start with easy contibue to hard.
given: working groups + non profit + board 
steering commitee oversees working groups 
Dual structure: technical: committee + working group 
		corporate: board + larger business
		potential: office + staff

Consensus: start small and grow, don;t over do it.

Steering committee:  
DC: proposal : chairs of the working group
AW: which way does it go: SC -> WG or the other way around
RG: ling term v. short term wg. IETF has both types of wg (BGP v. tweaks to
VoIP)
DC: distinguish project groups v. working groups, WG-> SC
    
    steady steady: SC= WG chairs + ex officio members
    role on the SC should have a cycle 

    Proposal:
    chairs + elected members
    process for WG chair renewal
    elected members = tenured election

RG: what is the role of SC?
DC: primary job = oversee the WG
    establish WG policy
    provide appeals process
    manage WG creation/extinction
    arbitration between WG
    manage / supervise to reduce conflicting directions between WG
    manage membership
    responsible for venues etc.  

AW: manage office
    set the scope and manage staffing of the office
    decisions about the budget

DC: note the notion budget: is it under SC or the corporate arm 
    WG will not necessarily have a technical agenda

RS: what is the relationship to the board. 
    
DC: how many WG do we expect to have?
RG: about 10
DC: what's the size of SC?
MW: keep it small?
RG: SC is only elected members, 5 people, 2 year term
DC: what's the election process/ etc. 
    premature to run elections, we can manage 5 working groups, 
2 others agree

    Initially: WG chairs + some people from this group
    migrate towards elected body
    risky: what is the role of the corporate members in the election
    

AW: Corporate should not influence technical direction
    if they are willing to support, that's great but they should not drive it
    
DC: let's look at an opposite approach: IETF follows our approach, other orgs
    follow a different  means where money buys influence

AW: companies should not control the process.  Feels that when corporate
interest is too large it is to the detriment of the community

MW: we're not building an industrial consotium, different than ZigBee.  TOS
=offshoot of the open source community

DC: are we building something that's corporate friendly? 

RG: What would the corps want?  License? Interfaces? piece of code? 
AW: coprs might want to be most interested in stability, testing, more precise
definition. They can accomplish that by funding the office.  

PB: academia is still the driving force.  His partners either talk to ZigBee
enthusiast of embedded SW houses that are interested in TOS.  They are not
interested in cotrol

DC: at this point corporate and academic interests are aligned

MW: different wokring groups may have a different bent (eg. ZigBee for TOS) 

PB: different interest in tools 

AW: push forwad the idea of corporations staffing the office

RS: dont' get into a self supporting cycle

DC: membership in the alliance. 
    individual membership:
	       IETF: free, you pay for the meetings
    priority: broad participation
AW: IEEE membership model 
      - free 
      - candidate membership 
      - full membership attained by participation (2 meeting attendance) 
      
MW: what does it mean to be a member

DC: tech contrib + people who are interested 

DC: 2 tiers: participant and member
    member = signup 
    contributor = attend meetings, participate in WG
    free + pay for meetings

DC: Corporate structure? 
AW: Corps pay
PB: do we need corporate memberships? 
DC: we need some money in the bank: event funding, infrastructure, operations
DC: feels that it would be nice to have all volunteer admin force
PB: how much money do we need? where do they get spent? 
DC: We should not have people whose sole income comes from the alliance
DC: Do we want to join an existing umbrella organization? 

DC: Straw proposals: 
    IETF: corps are not the members of the task force, but can participate in
    ISOC
    more common: money = influence
    corps can contribute directly to WG

MW: can we get started w/o money

AW: nice to have a budget
DC: tiered membership, w. lowest tier being 0 

    Corporate member
    Contributing corporate member: contribute in whatever way they can, board
    can suggest contribution levels

AW: what's the advantage for a contributing corporate member?  

DC: influence (position on board) -- probably not
    influence the process in ways related to the contribution

DC: what's the form of QPQ
AW: keep the structure light
DC: industry consortia = money influence
    others = the most important contrinution = time contributed to the WG
    
MW: apache has no corporate members

DC: light membership, for corporate membership = one employee is a member

    we would welcome most people, if they want to participate, keep the
administration light.  

DC: topics for next week:
    IP + source licensing