Voting at OASIS

Mozilla are members of OASIS, in order to take part in a particular standards group which is chartered there. However, we have not been involved with any of their other work.

OASIS has a rule that at least 15% of members must affirmatively vote to approve a new standard. Therefore, by being a member and not participating in such votes, we make it slightly harder for standards to be approved. Recently, I was emailed by the implementers of an open source version of one such standard asking for my vote in order to reach this threshold.

However, I do not have time to evaluate the purpose and technical merits of all the standards OASIS produces.

Here is my proposed attitude to such requests; comments welcome:

“If the OASIS proposal is under a proper royalty-free IPR policy (known in OASIS-speak as “RF on limited terms”), and does not obviously harm Mozilla’s mission or the open web, I will vote Yes if specifically requested. Otherwise, I will not normally vote. Any member of the Mozilla community is welcome to make the case to me for a different vote in a particular case.”

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