Proposed Revisions to OpenID Process Document and IPR Policy

Published September 13, 2024
Dear OpenID Foundation Members,

A subgroup of OpenID Foundation board members and key staff have been working to update the “OpenID Process” document based on issues raised by some board members to ensure the document aligns with how the Foundation currently works. This update addresses those original issues and also identified a significant number of mainly editorial issues and improvements that were possible. It also highlighted inconsistencies and other issues that required coordinating revisions with the “Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy,” so that has been added to the scope and improvements proposed.

The changes were unanimously approved by the board at the September 12, 2024 board meeting. Approving these changes also requires a 21-day review and 14-day vote of the membership.

Process Document Material Changes
  • Throughout the document addition to include the intended “, and Final Specifications Incorporating Errata Corrections” in the various clauses of artifact
  • Addition of 4 new defined terms for clarity “Non-Core Decision”, “Core Decision”, “Quorum Requirement”, “Substantive Change”
  • Updated definition of "Specifications Council" and edit of Section 2 to address Specs Council membership requirements
  • Moved the descriptions of elements of Sections 3.1 and 3.2 into “Table 1 - Work Group Decision points”
  • Table 2 - Re-drafting for clarity the decision options for Inter-WG Core decision and updated the Quorum requirement to be more realistic “20% of the Active Contributors to the applicable WG or 20 Contributors to the applicable WG, whichever is lower.”
  • Sections 4.4, 4.7, 4.10 replace “will promptly be submitted to a vote of the OIDF membership” with “will promptly be submitted for a Supermajority confirmation vote of the Board”
  • Section 4.8 adds “Work Group Repositories” to places where “work of a WG will be conducted”
  • Section 4.8 updates "WG documents" to "Implementers Drafts, Final Specifications, and Final Specifications Incorporating Errata Corrections"
  • Section 4.10 (and corresponding part of Table 2) defines WG meeting quorum and Intra-WG non-core as at least six Contributors
  • Section 5.1 is redrafted to reflect the real stages of the Specification approval process and to make it clearer

IPR Policy Material Changes
  • Throughout the document addition to include the intended “, and Final Specifications Incorporating Errata Corrections” in the various clauses
  • Addition of “Table 1: Overview of IPR applicability” - This is intended to help the reader comprehend the rest of the document and to which document types the rights and obligations apply
  • Addition of the defined term “Errata corrections”
  • Addition of the defined term “Final Specification Incorporating Errata Corrections”
  • Significant re-draft to the definition of “Specification”
  • Addition of the defined term “Work Group Draft”
  • Re-organisation of section “V. Copyrights” to improve the clarity and to be much clearer about the two artifact types and which rights and obligations apply to each.
  • Addition of a new paragraph entitles “(b) License” which explains the license that the OIDF grants to others

Links
Links to current documents
 Links to redlined versions of the documents

Key Milestones
  • Friday, September 13, 2024 – 21-day member review begins
  • Friday, October 4, 2024 – 21-day member review concludes
  • Saturday, October 5, 2024 – 14-day member voting opens
  • Saturday, October 19, 2024 – member voting concludes

The vote begins on Saturday, October 5, 2024 and take place at https://openid.net/foundation/members/polls/340. 
Marie Jordan
OpenID Foundation Secretary
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