Organization

Organization

The Distributed Text Services is a organized and led by a community of volunteers. It is not currently a legal entity. Decisions are made collectively by the Technical Committee. Members of this committee share ownership of the GitHub repository and the Google Group. The committee also is responsible for the evolution and documentation of the specification itself.

Technical Committee

  • The Technical committee is responsible for voting on feature requests and bugs.
  • Having been established, the committee itself is now responsible for approving new members to the committee.
  • New feature requests must be voted on by the technical committee in order to be approved as additions to the specification.
  • Committee members have 1 month after a feature request is officially opened for voting to provide their vote. Not submitting a vote within that time frame is the same as voting yes. An exception is made for feature requests opened for voting in July and August. The voting period for these is extended to 2 months.
  • Decisions are normally made by consensus. If there is need for a vote, the chair is responsible for determining a fair process and ensuring adequately informed discussion ahead of time.
  • Consensus means that there is adequate representation, nobody cannot live with the decision, and there is general approval for the decision.

Roles

Technical Committee Member

  • attends at least 1/2 of the regular teleconferences
  • is responsible for voting on new feature requests and bugs
  • must take into account issues raised by observers and users of the standard
  • is responsible for contributing to development of specification features and bug fixes

Chair of the Technical Committee

The chair has the responsibility to run the meetings, create agendas, ensure that issues are adequately understood before decisions are made, and seek decisions by consensus whenever possible. The chair also ensures that decisions are adequately recorded and assigns and tracks action items.

Ambassador

  • distinguishes a member of the community who makes material contributions to the effort.
  • comments on documentation, stays abreast of decisions, provides use cases.

Contributor

  • comments on documentation, stays abreast of decisions, provides use cases.

Technical Committee Members

  • Hugh Cayless (Duke University)
  • Thibault Clérice (Inria)
  • Jonathan Robie (Biblica, Inc)
  • Ian W. Scott (Tyndale Seminary)

Past Members

  • Bridget Almas (Alpheios.net)
  • Vincent Jolivet (Ecole Nationale des Chartes)

Ambassadors

  • Matteo Romanello (EPFL)
  • Pietro Liuzzo (Hamburg Universität)

Minutes of meetings

Technical committee minutes can be found at github.com/distributed-text-services/meeting-notes

Specific situations

Question: What about excused absences?

Excused absences are recorded and may be taken into account if a decision to remove a committee member needs to be made.

Question: How flexible are we on dates?

If a member of the technical committee can’t make it, we can negotiate dates.

Question: What happens if there is no consensus ?

If consensus cannot be reached in a meeting, we will generally postpone the decision pending further discussion. If we find ourselves unable to reach a decision on an important issue, the chair will work with participants or appoint someone else to work with participants beyond meeting time to try to find agreement. If we simply cannot reach a decision, the group needs to decide how to proceed.

Question: What about conflict of interest with the chair, when the chair has a strong opinion?

  • Group members can always say they believe the chair should recuse for a decision or other activity
  • Group members can ask chair to be excessively clear whether operating as a member or chairing

Question: what is the process for officially opening the voting period for a feature or bug request

(i.e. does the clock start when the item is submitted, is there a formal triage process, etc.)

  • In general, anything at all complicated should be submitted at least 1 week before a meeting that decides on it.
  • If there is consensus to make a decision in a meeting, we can decide

Past and Present Contributors

The following individuals have contributed to this effort:

  • Bridget Almas
  • Hugh Cayless
  • Thibault Clérice
  • Zachary Fletcher
  • Vincent Jolivet
  • Pietro Liuzzo
  • Emmanuelle Morlock
  • Jonathan Robie
  • Matteo Romanello
  • James Tauber
  • Jeffrey C. Witt
  • Ian W. Scott