From:
John Lohmeyer, Chair, INCITS T10
Robert Snively, Chair, INCITS T11
Dan Colegrove, Chair, INCITS T13
To: Michael, David
Cc: Garner, Jennifer
Subject: SPB Agenda Item 5.1
Dear Mr. Michael,
We have discussed Mr. Zemrowski's points outlined in in050124 and believe that the perceived benefits of amembers-only policyon committee participation are far outweighed by the disadvantages of suchapolicy. We are strongly in favor of open access to committee websites and e-mail reflectors and in favor of accepting the help of all those willing to contribute to the committee activities, whether formal members or not.
We understand and agree that there should be a requirement that all appointed INCITS officers, representatives to INCITS executive and policy boards,and international delegates should be designated representatives of a member organization in order to qualify for those positions.
However, for individual participation in the technical work related to projects of a technical committee or task group, webelieve that such restrictionsmay becounter-productive. Our experience suggests the following advantages ofan open access policy.
A)Win competitionfor standardsprojects
Within the technical areas of most INCITS standards proposals, there are a number of organizations and consortia that do not requireanyformal membership fees. If INCITS began torestrict accessfor non-paying participants, the standards focus and expertise would begin to drift toward such organizations and away from INCITS. One of the factors that keeps the standards development expertise at work in INCITS committees instead of some other standards organization or consortiumis thefreeaccess to contributions to the development process and the welcoming attitude of the committees toward expertise, regardless of formal membership.
B) Leverage of specialized expertise
Within the technical areas of most INCITS standards proposals, there are many highly specialized fields that lie outside the expertise of the member organizations. The open and welcoming attitude of the committees toward those having that specialized knowledge has attracted the attention of such specialiststo solving the problems of standards that are otherwise only peripherally related to their areas of expertise. As an example, there has been a great deal of cross-pollination between IEEE 802.3 physical layer implementations, INCITS T11 Fibre Channel physical layer implementations, and INCITS T10 SCSI physical layer implementations that would not have occurred in a more restrictive environment. Much of the work of such specialists involves interactions during a relatively short time such that membership may not even be possible.
C) Powerful early technical review
The sophistication and complexity of most INCITS standards proposals makes broadly based attention to each individual proposal that comes into a standard a very important part ofthe final completeness and accuracy of the standard.Limiting access to those proposals narrows the early review of a standardso thataccuracy isharder to achieve. The INCITS public review process usually obtains comments only from those who have participated in the standards development process. If INCITS public review were the first time that non-member organizations had access to the thoughts of the committee, it would be very difficult to integrate constructive new ideas into a standard. Many highly respected organizations would simply choose instead not to review or implement such standards.
D)Smooth working relationships with related organizations
T10, T11, and T13 presently have smooth working partnerships with trade organizations, consortia, and non-accredited standards development organizations principally because those organizations perceive the committees as open with very accessible working practices. The technical and market expertise of those partner organizations combined with the technical expertise of those in the INCITS committees is very helpful to the standardization process. Such relationships assist in the prioritization of INCITS TC activities and provide supporting technical activities outside the scope of the INCITS standards. Examples of such organizations include the SFF Committee (storage device form factors, optical transceiver form factors, cabling and connectors), IETF (SNMP related management models and IP mappings), SNIA (contributor of management and command set draft standards), STA (marketing prioritization for SCSI standards), FCIA (marketing prioritization for Fibre Channel standards), Compact Flash Association (compact flash card and microdriveinterfaces), and Mt. Fuji (DVD/CD command sets).
We are uncertain, too, about the reason that INCITS is considering the possibility of changing the access policy.The principaldiscussion pointnotedin Mr. Zemrowski'sletterrelatestoperceivedunfairness with respect to the support of overhead activities.Wehave not heard any member in any of our TCs express such a concern. If the concern is simply the financing of INCITS supporting activities, many less restrictive mechanismsshould beavailable to increase such support, including raising the membership fees.Membersofour TCs appear to recognize and appreciatethe large costs incurred byall participants in developing standards and are willing to accept non-member participants because of the tremendous resources gained by the committee from such participants.
Thank you very much for your consideration of our additional points in your meeting.
Sincerely,
John Lohmeyer
(719) 533-7560
Robert Snively
(408) 333-8135
Dan Colegrove
(702) 614-6119