2024-11-13 Steering Committee Meeting Notes

Attendance

Steering Committee Members Attending and Participating 

Daniel Bachenheimer (Accenture Global Solutions Limited)
Steve McCown (Anonyome Labs)
Keren Leung (Certizen)
George Chan (Certizen)
Wenjing Chu (Futurewei Technologies, Inc.)
Drummond Reed (Gen Digital)
Karla McKenna (GLEIF)
Caryn Van Exel (GS1)
Nicholas Racz (Key State Capital)
John Jordan (Province of British Columbia)

Also Participating

Judith Fleenor (ToIP Executive Director)

Michelle Janata (LF PM)

Agenda 

• Recording
  • Link
• Presentation (Google Slides)

Call to Order
Judith Fleenor called the meeting to order at approx. 12:02 pm PT and announced the meeting would be recorded. There were no objections. 

Approval of Minutes 

Judith Fleenor presented a resolution to approve the minutes from the previous Steering Committee meeting (Exhibit A) October 9, 2024, and solicited questions from the group. There were no questions or objections. 

Judith Fleenor indicated that consensus had been reached and the following resolution was approved: 

RESOLVED:  That the minutes of the October 9, 2024 meeting of the Steering Committee, in the form attached hereto as Exhibit A, are hereby confirmed, approved, and adopted.

New Member Review 

No new members since our last meeting on October 9, 2024. 

TSWG - License Change Update

background:

The ToIP Technology Stack Working Group (TSWG) was originally chartered in 2020 under the following three JDF IPR selections:

-Creative Commons copyright

-W3C patent license

-Apache source license

In late 2023, at the request of our ACDC Task Force co-chairs (especially Sam Smith) and GLEIF as a member, we closed the original TSWG and opened a new TSWG-2 to switch to these IPR selections (which they wanted for their KERI suite of specifications):

-OWFa copyright

-OWFa patent license

-Apache source license

To make that switch, we gave all TSWG members the 60-day notice required under the W3C Patent License to exclude any patent claims before we made the switch. (There were no exclusions filed.)

We later discovered, after the TSWG-2 was up and running, that one of our Steering Members, Anonyome Labs, had not been paying attention during the notice period and objected to the switch.

Anonyme Labs agreed to hold off on their objection until the KERI suite was finished and submitted to ISO under the PAS process.

In September, ToIP chartered a new KERI Suite Working Group (KSWG) for all the KERI-related specs (which had been at either the ACDC Task Force or the DID WebS Task Force of the TSWG).

We followed the procedures recommended to first approve the draft specs from these two TSWG TFs.

Then the TSWG officially voted to contribute those specs to the new KSWG.

Then the TSWG closed those two TFs.

Now both Anonyome Labs  and the remaining members of the TSWG want to move back to our original IPR selections (because the W3C Patent License is more widely accepted/interoperable with the other standards orgs we are working with, namely DIF and W3C).

Sam Smith remains an active member of the TSWG (and co-chair of our Trust Spanning Protocol Task Force, as he’s one of the core architects of that protocol spec). He is okay with the TSWG moving back to the W3C license but very strong argues that the TSWG should adopt a policy that any contributions should meet the contribution requirements of the OWF CLA.

That means that if a TSWG member makes a contribution covered by their own IPR, they have a 45 day window to withdraw it, after which they cannot withdraw it (as they can under the W3C Patent License until the spec is final final).

We have checked, and the rest of the TSWG members (including Anonyome Labs) is fine with that procedural requirement, as long as the final license is the W3C Patent License.

Here are the Steps Mike Dolan proposed we follow:

1) The TSWG-2 announces that we will be closing the current TSWG-2 and opening a new TSWG-3 with new IPR terms after the 45 day exclusion notice period required by our current OWF IPR terms. Any contributor who has any patent claims to exclude from our current work must notify us within that 45 day period. (That’s exactly the procedure we followed last time when the TSWG switched from the W3C Patent License to the OWF license.)

2) After the 45 days has elapsed, the current TSWG-2 votes to contribute any current work to the new TSWG-3.

3) We close the current TSWG-2 and open the new TSWG-3 with the Creative Commons copyright, W3C Patent License, and Apache source code license.

4) The new TSWG-3 passes a procedural rule that all contributions must take place under the OWF CLA contribution policy of a 45-day limit for withdrawing a contribution.

5) DONE
Call for Consensus announcement:
If no objections are sent via email to the Steering Committee email list by November 22nd, 2024, this resolution will be considered approved.

RESOLVED:  That the amended Joint Development Foundation, LLC Trust over IP Foundation Series Membership Agreement (DRAFT v.5.0.1 ToIP V1.6, 12.11.24.pdf), circulated to the Steering Committee email distribution list on November 13 is Approved.

ToIP Steering Committee Elections

Working Groups should be getting their list of nominees to Judith by November 22nd.
Judith to work with Min to create a ballot to go out to all members in early December.
Steering Committee Members: Who would you like to nominate?

LFDT Integration Update

Migration to the LFDT Tools such as LFX Meetings for Zoom and Calendar, moving from Slack to Discord, etc.  currently waiting on decisions by LF on how to handle standards organization within LF Tools and backend methods.
Goal, to have this resolved by end of November, so that our new PM, Min Yu, can get the new meeting for 2025 all in the new LFX Meetings and Zoom Rooms for meeting starting in 2025.
Working Group Chairs, to get new 2025 cadence of meetings to Judith by December 1st.

LFDT Members Summit Recap

Drummond, Karla, Nicho, Wenjing and Judith attended the first LFDT Members Summit in San Francisco. Our ToIP Session had about 30 people in attendance and was well received.
Open Discussion of impressions by those who attended
and Q and A session. Jim Zemlin presented a challenge to find solutions for identity and authenticity issues for open source code projects.  

Next steps will be to set up a meeting with Jim Zemlin to discuss how ToIP can assist with this challenge. 

Communication Plan - Website Updates

Website:

Our Work - Being worked on by Drummond.

Technology Arch Specification page
Evolution of the Stack page
- Evolutions of the Stack.pdf

Once those changes are made, then a BLOG post and updates to the homepage and deliverable pages will be made.
Waiting on the Spec to be finished and ready.

Next Meetings: 

All Members Meeting - Holiday Party?  Wednesday December 18th

10 am PDT / 1 pm EST / 17:00 UTC / 19:00 CEST

Steering Committee - Plenary and Discussion Meeting
- December 11th

noon PDT / 3pm EST / 20:00 UTC / 21:00 CEST

Adjournment 

At approximately 13:57 PT, Judith Fleenor adjourned the meeting.