Final Minutes for CA/Browser Forum Teleconference – 14 June 2018

Attendees: Arno Fiedler (D-TRUST), Ben Wilson (DigiCert), Cecilia Kam, 
(GlobalSign), Christopher Kemmerer (SSL.com), Daymion Reynolds (GoDaddy), Devon 
O’Brien (Google), Dimitris Zacharopoulos (HARICA), Frank Corday (Trustwave), 
Joanna Fox (GoDaddy), Jos Purvis (Cisco), Julie Olson (GlobalSign), Ken Myers 
(Federal PKI), Kirk Hall (Entrust), Li-Chun Chen (Chunghwa Telecom), Mike 
Reilly (Microsoft), Neil Dunbar (Trustcor), Patrick Tronnier (OATI), Peter 
Miscovic (Disig), Rich Smith (ComodoCA), Robin Alden (ComodoCA), Ryan Sleevi 
(Google), Shelley Brewer (DigiCert),Tim Hollebeek (DigiCert), Tim Shirley 
(Trustwave), Trevoli Ponds-White (Amazon), Virginia Fournier (Apple), Wayne 
Thayer (Mozilla), Wendy Brown (Federal PKI).

1.  Roll Call

2.  Read Antitrust Statement

3.  Review Agenda.  Agenda was approved.

4. Approval of Minutes of CABF Teleconference of May 31, 2018 as amended.  The 
Minutes as amended were approved.  Kirk also listed the missing portions of the 
Minutes from the London F2F meeting that occurred the prior week, and asked the 
volunteer Minutes takers to upload their Minutes as soon as possible.

5.  Validation Working Group update.  No report.

6.  Network Security Working Group update.  No report.

7.  Governance Change Working Group update.


(a) List of IPR Agreements v1.3 received to date.  Kirk reviewed the list of 
Members and Associate Members who have not yet signed and returned the new IPR 
Agreement v. 1.3, and said he would soon send individual emails to people at 
the organizations involved.



(b) Review of changes to Forum governance structure after July 3.  Kirk said 
the Governance Change Working Group had met by teleconference earlier in the 
week to map out the steps to take with the July 3 effective date of Ballot 206, 
and the conclusions were stated in the email he sent to the Public list.  He 
asked if there were comments or questions, but there were none.


8.  Policy Review Working Group update.  No update.

9.  Ballot Status - Discussion of ballots (See Ballot Status table at end of 
Agenda). No discussion.

10.  Follow-up from London F2F – June 5-7, 2018.  No discussion.

11.  Any Other Business.  Kirk referred to his email to the Forum earlier in 
the week discussing the issue of ETSI’s status as an Associate Member in the 
Forum, and whether anything would change once the deadline for signing the IPR 
Agreement v1.3 had passed.  He noted that Associate Members are invited to 
participate in the Forum to help the Forum in its work (they don’t apply as CAs 
and browsers do), and further noted that Bylaw 3.1 contains the following 
sentence: “In order to become an Associate Member, an organization must sign a 
mutual letter of intent, understanding, or other agreement and the Forum’s IPR 
Agreement, unless this latter requirement is waived in writing by the Forum 
based on overriding policies of the Associate Member’s own organization IPR 
rules.”  He noted that ETSI has objected years ago to signing the IPR Agreement 
based on ETSI policies, including the fact that the Forum is not a legal 
entity, and that for many years the Forum had relied on a 2009 Memorandum of 
Understanding between ETSI and the then-Chair of the Forum instead and waived 
the requirement that ETSI sign the IPR Agreement.  He proposed to continue this 
existing practice.

Ryan objected to discussing the matter as it was not listed on the Agenda, and 
shouldn’t be discussed under “Any Other Business” in the Agenda.  He believed 
the matter should be referred to the Governance Change Working Group for 
further discussion.

Virginia said the Agenda topic “Any Other Business” was an appropriate place 
for this discussion, and asked Ryan what his objection was.  Ryan reiterated 
that the topic was not listed on the Agenda, and said that the topic was 
discussed by the members the prior week with other related open Associate 
Member issues, and believed further discussion should happen in a Governance 
Change Working Group meeting.

Ben Wilson noted that Google’s counsel was on the Governance Change Working 
Group meeting earlier this week, and did not bring up the matter.  He noted 
that the current relationship and the existing MOU between the Forum and ETSI 
had been in place for nine years, and Ryan had never objected to it.  Ryan said 
the issue of waiving signing of the new IPR Agreement was an issue for other 
members to raise, not Google.

Virginia asked what Ryan’s specific concerns were about ETSI’s status, and what 
additional facts were needed.  She said that Google’s counsel didn’t seem to 
know anything about Ryan’s concerns on the Governance Change Working Group call 
earlier in the week.  Ryan said he wanted to understand what concerns ETSI has 
with its signing the IPR Agreement – we don’t have that information in archive 
fashion.  He’d like ETSI to clearly state its objections to signing.  He also 
objected to the discussion on various procedural grounds.

Virginia said that pointing out what’s wrong with something is minimally 
helpful to the Forum – she asked what Ryan thinks should be done.  Did he want 
a call with an ETSI person to discover what its problems were?  Ryan said yes, 
and asked that ETSI write a problem statement.  Virginia said the Governance 
Change Working Group could do this if it has appropriate contact addresses and 
phone numbers for ETSI.

Ben said the concern on this issue had been raised by Google, not ETSI, and the 
ball was in Google’s court.  Ryan said if someone at ETSI has issues with 
signing the IPR Agreement, let ETSI express those concerns.

Virginia suggested the way to do that was to have a call with ETSI.  Arno 
pointed out that Google is actually an ETSI member.

Dimitris said that at the London F2F meeting, we talked about Associate Members 
in general, and the fact that ETSI had said it couldn’t sign our IPR Agreement 
because the Forum was not a corporate entity.  But there were other unresolved 
questions about Associate Members as well – for example, if CPA Canada 
(WebTrust) signs the Agreement as an Associate Member, are the CPA Canada 
representatives also required to sign in the names of their auditing firms?  He 
said he would be interested in resolving these other issues also in the 
Governance Change Working Group.

Wendy said the Federal PKI would sign the IPR Agreement on behalf of the 
government and the FPKI representatives, and that the document was in legal 
review.

Kirk said it sounded like the Governance Change Working Group will take up all 
the open issues about Associate Members in future meetings.  He said that in 
the meantime, for the avoidance of doubt as to ETSI’s status in the Forum he 
planned to extend on ongoing invitation to ETSI to continue its participation 
in meetings and teleconferences as an invitee under Bylaw 5.4 until the Forum 
takes other action.

12.  Next call: June 28, 2018

13.  Adjourn

_______________________________________________
Public mailing list
[email protected]
https://cabforum.org/mailman/listinfo/public

Reply via email to