microfolks --
Last August, I announced a decision by the microformats admins to
place a seven-day hold on discussing legal and governance issues
raised by Joe Andrieu [1, attached]. Now that we've recently enacted
some wide-ranging changes to the legal status of microformats.org
contributions [2], I would like to revisit some aspects of that
message and apologize to Mr. Andrieu for those.
To briefly recap my role, I am the "first point of contact" for the
microformats admins on legal and governance issues. Historically,
this was due to my role at CommerceNet Labs, the nonprofit
organization that initially sponsored microformats.org (including the
current server bills). Due to my experience with several different
standards bodies and nonprofits, such as W3C, IETF, and CommerceNet,
I am perhaps too familiar with some of the legal consequences of
developing IT standards (though I am far, far from being a lawyer
myself).
In that light, I have been quite sensitive to any public discussion
that links microformats.org to standards. That includes potentially
overreacting to parallel discussions initiated publicly and privately
with Joe Andrieu (and others) earlier that year. The community policy
was (and is) to raise legal and governance issues with me directly,
before escalating concerns on record with the entire community [3].
In light of our prior emails and phone calls in the spring and
summer, Joe was making a good faith effort to work with that policy,
so I regret any implication of impropriety on his behalf in this
incident. I have always believed that he was sincere in his concerns,
even though I did not always agree with his positions.
Now that one aspect of the legal status of microformats has
significantly advanced, with the announcement of a public-domain
contribution policy, several of the concerns raised last year are now
moot. Given the situation at the time, I (and the admins) would not
change our decision to implement that 7-day hold. However, I
personally would like to apologize for how I communicated that
decision, to Joe and to the community. I am looking forward to
keeping this experience in mind as we continue to work together to
grow the microformats community and extend the impact of this novel
approach to open data exchange and its still-evolving open
development process.
Sincerely,
Rohit Khare
[1] http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-
August/010380.html
[2] http://microformats.org/blog/2007/12/29/making-open-standards-as-
open-as-possible/
[3] http://microformats.org/wiki/
Category:public_domain_license#Point_of_Contact
-----Original Message-----
From: Rohit Khare [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 6:56 PM
To: microformats-discuss@microformats.org
Cc: Joe Andrieu
Subject: A 7-day hold on discussing legal/process issues
After Joe Andrieu's most recent edits to the wiki under "Standards,
IP, and Transparency" [1], the admins and I have decided to impose a
7-day cooling-off period on discussions regarding governance and
legal status issues by Mr. Andrieu, for repeatedly disregarding the
community guidelines to discuss legal matters with me before
altering
the public wiki or archived mailing list discussions [2].
This action is not taken lightly: all of his recent messages and wiki
edits have been concerned these topics, without any direct
communication to me before or after. Note that while his
mailing list
and wiki access will be blocked for one week, if he has substantive
contributions *other* than governance issues, he remains welcome to
contact me to forward them on to the community.
This policy, a standing request to the microformats community to
avoid
legal debates on record without contacting me first, has
admittedly been questioned by him and by others. I am drafting a
separate email addressing some of those concerns, as well as Mr.
Andrieu's earlier public note to me [3]. Nonetheless, that is the
current community policy for better or worse, and the volunteer
admins have decided to uphold that with this decision.
-- Rohit Khare
[1]
http://microformats.org/wiki?title=governance-
issues&diff=0&oldid=19334
[2]
http://microformats.org/wiki/
Category:public_domain_license#Point_of_Contact
[3]
http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-July/
010318.h
tml
_______________________________________________
microformats-discuss mailing list
microformats-discuss@microformats.org
http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
