[Tinyos-alliance] TEP 120

[Philip Levis]

Now that SenSys and the TTX have passed, I finally got back to TEP  
120. It would be good to move this document forward so we can put it  
out for community review. I incorporated Jack's comments and made a  
few other edits. I've attached the current version in HTML and RST  
formats. Following the TEP process, we should reach consensus that  
it's ready before David puts it in last call.

Phil

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TinyOS Alliance Structure
==============================================

:TEP: 120
:Group: Alliance Working Group 
:Type: Informational
:Status: Draft
:TinyOS-Version: All
:Authors: Philippe Bonnet, David Culler, Deborah Estrin, Ramesh Govindan, Mike Horton, Jeonghoon Kang, Philip Levis, Lama Nachman, Jack Stankovic, Rob Szewczyk, Matt Welsh, Adam Wolisz 
:Draft-Created: 17-April-2006
:Draft-Version: $Revision: 1.6 $
:Draft-Modified: $Date: 2007/05/15 23:29:48 $
:Draft-Discuss: TinyOS Alliance <tinyos-alliance at mail.millennium.berkeley.edu>


.. Note::

   This memo documents a blueprint for an open alliance aroung
   TinyOS for the TinyOS Community and requests discussion and
   suggestions for improvement.  Distribution
   of this memo is unlimited. This memo is in full compliance with
   TEP 1.

Abstract
====================================================================

This memo describes the goals and organization structure of the TinyOS Alliance.
It covers membership, the working group forums for contribution, intellectual
property, source licensing, and the TinyOS Steering Committee (TSC).

1. Charter
====================================================================

.. TinyOS Alliance Charter::

Formulate a legal and organizational framework for an alliance that
can facilitate the continued advancement of the open embedded network
ecosystem around TinyOS and support the activities, interactions, and
development of the worldwide academic and industrial TinyOS community.

2. Overview
====================================================================

This memo defines a blueprint and conceptual foundation for an open
alliance that fulfills the above charter. It defines the following ten
aspects of the alliance:

   * Mission
   * Legal structure
   * Organizational structure
   * Membership criteria
   * Working group processes
   * Election process
   * Intellectual property
   * Source licensing
   * Funding
   * Work products

We (the Alliance) recognize that each of these aspects contributes to the 
whole, is inter-related and needs to be consistent overall.  This document 
attempts to address them sequentially, recognizing that each depends on the 
others.  It draws on lessons from several related
organizations, although each of these also has significantly
different goals from those set out in the charter.

1) IETF - Open protocols, technical documents 
2) OSDL - Stable, Enterprise Linux
3) Apache - Suite of open source tools
4) Zigbee - Network layer and marketing for 15.4
5) OSGI - Service layer
6) FSF - Foundational software

We (the Alliance) draw most strongly upon the IETF, even though that 
organization was
focused around creating and standardizing protocols, rather than
developing a code base.  Its emphasis on rough consensus AND
running code placed issues akin to those we face near the fore.  We
share the view that technical excellence is a primary goal and that
the organization should be structured to sustain and overall cohesive
architecture.  In our case, it is represented by high quality
reference implementations and standard APIs, as well as techical
documents and protocols.  We share an emphasis on broad participation
centered on the contributions of individual members.  

We encourage industrial involvement, industrial development, and
industrial support.  The organization is welcoming to companies, but
it keeps financial support and marketing activities (while both
important) at arms length from the technical process.  We share the
concept that proper behavior of participants and member companies is
most strongly shaped by code of ethics, captured in organization rules
and social norms, rather than threats of legal reprocusions.  The
broader marketplace is a more effective enforcement body than any
technical organization.  Thus, we ask that participants declare
relevant IP that they are aware of, rather than force a strict
accounting of potentially relevant IP.  We encourage the development
of open solutions that are implemented without the need for particular
proprietary IP.  In the IETF, this is addressed by the requirement of
multiple interoperable implementations before standardization.  If
such implementations can be developed without legal issues, it is
likely that other non-infringing implementations are possible.  Like
IETF, we seek a lean bureacracy and mostly volunteer organization.

From OSDL, we share the goal of developing a stable, high quality
version of an open source system.  This suggests that the alliance
have a strong role in developing test suites and broadly accessible
testbeds, as well as structures for sharing development resources.
However, we avoid the OSDL structure of the scale of monetary
contributions dictating technical oversite.  We are not constrained by
a GPL license structure, as is the OSDL.

From Apache, we draw the strong sense of a technical meritocracy
centered on individual contributors.  We seek to permit a loose enough
consortium that there can be a lot of individual innovation,
especially in areas of tools, devices, and new platforms.  We also
seek to retain the notion that credit should be given to authors.  In
Apache, giving the copyright to the Apache organization exchanges the
value of the brand for technical contributions.  For a broad alliance
representing many universities and large companies, such a copyright
scheme is likely to be an untenable barrier.  Instead, we seek to
provide a simple source license regime with technical tools for giving
credit and strong social pressure to comply.

From Zigbee, we share the goal of providing marketing support for the
accomplishments of the alliance and that we should seek to define
standardized services, not just protocols.  We recognize that the
alliance serves a useful function in being a point of allocation for
various namespaces, but that this important function should not be a
tool for extracting financial contributions.  We see the value of an
IP pool to give confidence that the standard can be adopted without
becoming entrapped later by IP terms, however, we also see that such a
pool presents a very significant barrier.  Moreover, it does not
prevent members from obtaining IP to use it to their advantage with
other members of the alliance.  It also does not constrain non-members
from obtaining blocking IP.  It does discourage contributions that
might pull IP into the pool.  We prefer a process of declaration and
multiple implementation.

3. Mission
====================================================================

The mission of the TinyOS Alliance is to provide a forum to facilitate:

  * the continued growth of a healthy TinyOS developer and user community
    with support for innovation as well as industry advancement, 
  * the development and maintenance of a stable, technically-sound base of
    TinyOS technology and surrounding tools through the creation of
    standard interfaces and protocols, vetted extensions, open reference
    implementations, technical documents, testing and verification suites,
    and educational materials, 
  * the contribution of innovative technology from a world-wide research 
    community and the maturation and dissemination of these
    contributions, and
  * the promotion of the technology, the community, and the impact of networked 
    embedded systems.


4. Organizational Structure
====================================================================

The Alliance has a technical advisory function: guide the evolution of
the TinyOS architecture, formulate and track progress of working
groups, and provide an open and impartial process for technical
documentation.  It also has an organizational advisory function:
manage industry interaction, legal and IP issues, evolution of the
organization itself, membership issues and so on.

We follow an approach that starts small and grows the structure as
needed. The focus should be on the working groups. Working groups are
not limited to technical functions; they can be formed to promote
developments, markets, etc. Beyond the working groups, the
organization should remain lean, relying primarily on volunteers. We
want to avoid creating a situation where the organization becomes
focused on its own growth and pre-eminence at the expense of the
larger community and technical agenda.

Technical directions should be driven by merit and overall soundness,
and built on consensus.

The Alliance consists of a non-profit corporation with a Board of
Directors, a small support staff (primarily volunteer or outsourced)
and a Steering Committee. The Steering Committee oversees a collection
of Working Groups, each with a Chair and Members.

4.1 Steering Committee
---------------------------------------------------------------

In the steady state the Steering Committee will consist of the chairs
of working groups plus a handful of elected members at large. Tenure
of a position on the Steering Committee will consist of two years with
opportunity for renewal. We want to see a vibrant, engaged, and
constantly evolving leadership while allowing for long-term and
committed members.

Initially the steering committee would be formed from working group
chairs plus some subset of the Alliance working group members.  This
initial committee will be responsible for putting in place the
membership and elections processes, which will then be utilized to
form the regular Steering Committee.

The primary role of the Steering Committee (SC) is to oversee the Working
groups (WGs). This means establishing WG policy, providing appeals
process, managing WG creation/extinction, arbitrating between WGs, and
supervising activities to resolve conflicting directions and moving
the process towards overall architectural coherence.

The SC is also responsible for reviewing and approving all TEPs. WGs
submit TEPs to the SC for review. The SC should appoint one
contributing Alliance member not affiliated with the corresponding WG
to review the TEP. This reviewer, who may or may not be a member of
the SC, may solicit comments from the community at large, but must
also thoroughly review the submitted TEP. WGs must address any
issues/questions brought up either by the reviewer or by other
community members. Once the reviewer approves the revisions, he/she
presents the TEP to the SC for approval by rough consensus. Finally,
TEPs that affect the organizational structure of the Alliance must
also be approved by the Board.

Finally, the Steering Commitee will be responsible for determining the
procedural elements of the Alliance. This includes election
procedures, membership criteria, selection of venues, oversight of
access to code repositories and Alliance web sites, and regular
Alliance meetings that occur at least once a year.

4.2 Working Groups
-------------------------------------------------------

The working groups form the core of the alliance. Each working
group will have a chair who will be responsible for WG processes,
reporting, meetings, and membership. Working groups and their
functions are discussed in more detail in a later section.

4.3 Board of Directors
------------------------------------------------------- 

The non-profit will require a Board of Directors responsible for
corporate matters. 

5. Membership and Participation
====================================================================

We desire to continue the TinyOS tradition of promoting broad
membership.  This means that we want to keep barriers to entry low in
all respects: legal, financial, and organizational.  As with IETF and
Apache, we want to shape the organization as a meritocracy that
encourages, promotes, and credits the contributions of its members.
Companies have an essential role, but merit, not finances should
dictate direction.  Membership and influence should recognize the
importance of adopters, not just developers.

The fundamental membership is individual, as individuals create work products,
serve on working groups and committees, and vote.  We have two forms:

  * Member: Individual who joins the Alliance and participates at a
     basic level, typically as consumer of technology.

  * Contributing Member: Individual who additionally joins working groups,
    attends meetings, or contributes code or other assets to the
    Alliance.   Contributing members are elected to various posts and
    have voting rights.

There is no individual membership fee, but members will be responsible for
nominal registration fees at Alliance meetings.

Corporations and organizations have institutional membership, which
reflects their degree of effort.

  * Institutional Member: A corporation or organization
    that joins the Alliance, agrees to appear on the Alliance
    web site and documents, and pays a nominal administrative fee.
    (Min. Annual $500 for small companies and non-profits, $1000 for larger)

  * Contributing Institutional Member: Corporation or institutional
    organization that additionally provides financial support, resources,
    facilities, technical contributions, intellectual property,
    marketing support, or other meaningful contributions to the
    Alliance. Such institutions are featured prominently in the Alliance and
    have the opportunity to appoint individuals as contributing members.
    (Min. Annual $2000 for small companies and non-profits, $5000 for larger)

Rather than focusing on maximizing the financial contributions into
the alliance, we are interested in maximizing the impact of the
alliance in facilitating a healthy academic and industrial, research
and production ecosystem around embedded network technology.

The organization will be able to accept direct financial and
intellectual property contributions.  The IP policy should encourage
corporate participation while preserving focus on soundness, merit,
and consensus building.  Ultimately, we seek to promote a meritocracy
that recognizess the contributions of the individuals, whether they
be members of corporations, academic institutions, govermental
institutions, or unaffiliated.

6. Working Groups
====================================================================

There will be two forms of working groups. LONG-STANDING groups are
chartered to develop important areas or subsystems.  For example, we
expect longstanding groups on routing, management, platforms, testing,
programming tools, and education.  SHORT-TERM groups have a fixed
mandate to tackle a particular topic.  For example, there may be
groups to develop a particular protocol, establish a policy or
licensing format, or address a particular application capability.

There will be two means of Working Group formation: grass roots and
charter. Grass roots groups are formed by individuals or groups
who have a preliminary version of something important and want to make
it part of TinyOS.  They assemble and make a request to the SC with a
proposed charter statement and chair.  Chartered groups are
formed by SC or Board of Directors to address a recognized need for an
important area of development.  The SC solicits members and chair with
a particular charter in mind.  WGs may be formed for organizational or
marketing goals, as well as technical goals.

The typical output of a working group is technical documentation AND
working code, including interface definitions and standard proposals.
We seek to promote the development of standardized interfaces,
protocols, services, and tools with high quality, open reference
implementations of each.  We seek to have these standards be
implementable without relying on particular proprietary intellectual
property.  We are not interested in discouraging development of
implementations that have excelled in various ways through proprietary
IP, but standards should not require the use of such IP and should
allow for multiple, interoperable implementations.  The Steering
committee will be engaged in ratification of standards by actively
participating in the community review process and document evolution.

7. Intellectual Property
====================================================================

In general we want to promote the development, adoption and use of
open technology.  We want to avoid having the advancement of embedded
networks getting trapped into proprietary IP.  Accordingly, our IP
policy builds heavily on the IETF mode.  We also want to avoid a high
barrier to participation.  Thus, we want to avoid demanding membership
requirements that require extensive legal analysis and assessing deep
strategic analysis before joining.  In particular, IP pooling or broad
IP assignment requirements are seen to too large a barrier and
discourage the active participation of members.  At the same time, we
recognize that without such measures only, members cannot expect
guarantees of IP rights.  We also want to avoid sponging IP from
others or worse, having members or non-members running ahead of the
Alliance and creating blocking IP.  In essence, all participants must
operate with eyes open.  The Alliance encourage an open process, open
standards, and open source with a clear code of ethics, but leaves
broader issues of enforcement to the outside market.  Like IETF, we
rely on disclosure of known IP of relevance, an open process, and a
code of conduct.  Working groups are encourage to create work products
that do not rely on proprietary IP for implementation.

We also want to avoid requiring a member institution from having to
conduct a complete inventory of IP holdings for potential relevance.
This is impractical for Universities and large corporations.  It is
the responsibility of the members to disclose IP or relvance, whether
it is their property or not, so that they Alliance members can make
informed decisions and trade-offs.

Following the IETF, to establish a culture of openness, meeting
discussions, presentations, and technical documents are
non-confidential.  This simple measure is a signficant step towards
establishing the culture of openness and it avoids large legal and
organizational hassles, as evident in OSDL.

As with the IETF, there will be a mechanism for contributing IP to the
Alliance.  This will be treated along with other forms of contribution
in establishing member status.

Working Groups will be tasked to avoid forming standards and creating
work products that fundamentally depend on proprietary IP, i.e., where
the proposal can only reasonably be implemented using such IP.
Members recognize that in making proposals, they are required by
Alliance rules to disclose what IP they know to be relevant.  In the
rare cases where a working group determines that IP dependent
proposals are sufficiently critical that they be pursued, such IP must
be available on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms for the
Steering Committee to be able to approve the action.

Of course, Intellectual Property in the TinyOS alliance is closely
tied to source licensing terms, as dicussed in greater detail in that
section. As part of Alliance rules, members agree to only check in
code that conforms to Alliance source license policy.  As part of
keeping barriers to participation low, GPL and code based on
potentially viral licensing terms must be carefully compartmentalized,
explicit, and not present in core software.  It will typically involve
development tools, such as the compilers and peripheral Linux-based
devices. 

8. Source Licensing
====================================================================

In general, we want to provide a mechanism where individuals and
companies can easily contribute source, can utilize what is available,
and can gain recognition for their efforts.  Following the TinyOS
tradition, our source licensing policy will be most strongly aligned
with BSD and its more modern variants.  We recognize several inherent
tensions and trade-offs in formulating the source license.

We want to give credit where credit is due.  Fundamentally, the
community moves forward by contributing valuable technology and
standing upon each other's shoulders, not on their feet.  Credit and
respect drive a virtuous cycle of technical advance.  We do have
several examples where companies, or even resarch institutions, have
gained substantial benefit from the work of others while presenting it
as their own.  This concern is partially addressed by GPL, where if
you build upon the work of others you are obliged to put it back in
the open.  Apache addresses this issue by requiring acreditation of
the Apache foundation.  However, this is connected with a stiff
membership requirement of signing the copyright to Apache.
Participants make that sacrifice when they view the brand appeal
associated with the Apache meritocracy as of sufficient value to
warrant the arrangement.  Apache is also a losely affiliated
consortium of relatively localized projects, typically in very well
established technical areas.  Our situation is different because we
have many contributors to a cohesive whole and many of these
contributors are at leading research institutions where copyright must
rest with the host institution.  Moreover, much of the work is at the
leading edge of technology.

We recognize that the TinyOS "brand" is of value and will be
increasingly so as the Alliance becomes more formal.  We do not want
it tainted with its use as a marketing tool on inferior technology.
Thus, we want to connect the use of the TinyOS term with membership,
contribution, and conformance to Alliance rules and guidelines.

We have the additional wrinkle that we are dealing primarily with
embedded technology, which may have no visible user interface.  And,
we have limited resources so carrying additional footprint for legal
conformance is unattractive.

Furthermore, many of our contributors are from organizations that have
very precisely defined sets of acceptable source licensing terms.  As
much as having a common license throughout the Alliance would make it
easy for everyone to know the specific terms, getting diverse
institutions to agree to common language is impractical.  We do,
however, want to have as few distinct licenses with a little variation
as possible.  Fortunately, we are seeing convergence in licenses,
after several years of proliferation.

To address these matters, the Alliance has a preferred source license
based on the BSD framework and a small set of accepted licenses, some
of which have been gradfathered in with the existing code
base. Contributions can be made using one of those accepted licenses,
with the member organization name changed appropriately.
Organizations can submit additional proposed licenses to the Steering
Committee.  In order to avoid the debate of what constitutes "open
source," the Steering Committee will generally only consider
OSL-approved licenses for inclusion in the core. If a contributor
wishes to use a completely new license, it can submit the license to
the OSL first.

We will not require that the Alliance hold copyright of submitted
source code, but that it conform to Alliance guidelines.  These
include guidelines for adding copyrights to existing sources.

We will utilize the available development tools to facilitate the
generation of a list of contributors associated with any particular
instantiation of TinyOS components into an overall system,
application, or distribution.  We will provide tools for registering
contributors, copyrights, and applicable source licenses on line, for
ease of reference.

Alliance rules will set guidelines for giving credit to contributors
in documentation, source, tools, web sites and so on.  We want to
recognize the individuals and their host institutions, as well as the
Alliance.  But we do not want to create a bureacratic nightmare that
deters adoption, nor do we want to turn the Alliance into a policing
organization.  Harsh and threatening legal terms that have no credible
means of enforcement create a adversarial culture with little
practical advantage.  Instead, the Alliance will utilize cultural
norms and reputation as mechanisms for enforcing proper creditation.
We will develop tools that make compliance relatively easy, reward
those that do so, and provide a complaint mechanism to identify
misuse.

In taking this approach, we focus on needs of reference mplementations
of standardized interfaces and protocols.  The Alliance is not the
only vehicle for producing a hardened, tested, certified code base.
To do so would require the Alliance host a large technical staff, as
OSDL does.  Comapanies may do so, or produce implementations with
enhanced performance, reliability, or efficiency using their own
proprietary technology.  The Alliance encourages such innovation while
promoting standardized interfaces that allow such technology to
interoperate.

9. Funding
====================================================================

Initially, we expect that there are no full time employees in the
Alliance and that funding needs are limited to such items as lawyer's
fees, web site costs, and insurance. If the Alliance eventually
requires full time support personnel, the funding structure will have
to be re-visited.

As with the IETF, individuals are responsible for their own costs,
which primarily involve meetings, travel, and generation of work
products.  The Alliance is predominantly a volunteer organization.
Membership participation will involve attendance at Alliance meetings.
Registration fees will be charged to cover costs associated with
adminstration of the meetings.

To maintain the focus on technical excellence and meritocracy, we want
to avoid the heavy-handed quid-pro-quo seen in many industrial
consortiums where funding determines influence.  The best use of funds
and the best form of influence is direct contribution to the work
products of the Alliance.  To keep the structure of the Alliance and
its operations minimalist and lean, membership focuses on desired
impact and recognition, rather than control. We want the best way to
influence the direction of the Alliance to be to contribute technical
work and demonstrate leadership, rather than try to control what
individuals can or cannot contribute.

Companies and institutions are encouraged to contribute financial and
in-kind support.  It will be essential that companies provide initial
funding to create the legal structure and to establish basic IT
capabilities to host the web site and working groups.  Institutional
members will pay an annual membership fee. In some cases, a
contributing corporate member may provide in-kind services such as
lawyers' time used to draw up or comment on by-laws.  Targeted
contributions will be solicited and encouraged. In this case the
donator need not become a contributing corporate member, e.g., in
those cases where such a membership may be prohibited or unwanted.
The costs of meetings, such as the TinyOS technology exchange, will be
covered through registration fees and not by institutional membership
fees.

10. Work Products
====================================================================

The broad mission of the Alliance calls for a broad range of 
work products. 

Foremost among these are a set of TEPs documenting systems and
protocols as well as TEPs that provide guidance and knowledge to the
community. Technical documentation will have robust and open reference
implementations for the community to use, refine, improve, and
discuss. These reference implementations will not preclude
alternative, compatibile implementations which may have additional
features or optimizations. The Alliance Working Groups will
periodically produce periodic releases of these reference
implementations for the community to use and improve.

The Alliance will support community contributions of innovative
extensions and systems by providing a CVS repository to store them.
In order to keep these contributions organized for users, the Steering
Committee may nominate one or more people to caretake the repository
by setting minimal guidelines for the use of the directory structure
and migrating code as it joins the core or falls into disuse.

To make these technological resources more accessible and useful
to a broad embedded networks community, the Alliance will be
dedicated to providing a set of educational materials. This
includes introductory tutorials, documentation of core systems,
simple and complex example applications, and user guides.

In addition to educational sample applications, whose purpose
is to teach new developers about the internals and workings of
the technology, the Alliance will develop and make available
several end-user applications and tools. The goal is to improve
the accessibility of the technology to end-users while 
demonstrating its effectiveness. Historical examples of such applications
include Surge and TinyDB. An important part of this effort is
good documentation for users who are not expert programmers, as well
as tools and graphical environments. 


11. Conclusions
====================================================================

By focusing on consensus building and technical excellence, the
Alliance seeks to avoid being a forum for political and economic
positioning. It will achieve this by focusing on working groups and
the contributions of individuals, while not taking strong positions on
the benefits or drawbacks of different approaches.  The diverse
requiremements of sensornet applications mean that having a suite of
solutions, rather than a single one, is often not only desirable but
essential.

Over the past five years, low-power embedded sensor networks have
grown from research prototypes to working systems that are being
actively deployed. Furthermore, there is a vibrant research community
that actively works to deploy these systems and collaborate with
industry, making advances quickly accessible and usable. A great
catalyst to this growth has been the presence of a large community
around a shared, free code base.

The time has come to create an organizational structure to 
allow the effort to grow further. As sensornets become more widespread,
contributions and advancements will be from an increasingly broad
demographic of users, and bringing them all together will speed
progress and improve the potential benefit these systems can bring
to society. This focus on bringing disparate groups together lies
at the heart of the Alliance. Rather than depend on strong requirements,
it depends on broad collaboration and participation, placing a minimalist
set of expectations that will encourage the exchange of ideas and
technology.


12. Author's Address
====================================================================

| Philippe Bonnet <bonnet.p at gmail.com> 
| David Culler <dculler at archrock.com>
| Deborah Estrin 	<destrin at cs.ucla.edu> 
| Ramesh Govindan <ramesh at usc.edu> 
| Mike Horton 	<mhorton at xbow.com> 
| Jeonghoon Kang 	<budge at keti.re.kr> 
| Philip Levis    <pal at cs.stanford.edu>
| Lama Nachman 	<lama.nachman at intel.com>
| Jack Stankovic 	<stankovic at cs.virginia.edu>
| Rob Szewczyk 	<rob at moteiv.com> 
| Matt Welsh 	<mdw at cs.harvard.edu> 
| Adam Wolisz 	<awo at ieee.org> 

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