The recent discussions of our Bylaws and IPR Policy point out the need for Minutes of working group meetings. I have a suggestion at the end of this message on how we should do this in the future. Here are the relevant Bylaws and IPR Policy provisions.
Bylaw 5.1 Member Mail List and Member Web Site The Forum shall maintain a Member Mail List and Member Web Site that are not accessible by the public. The following matters may be posted to the Member Mail List and Member Web Site: (a) Draft minutes of Forum meetings (both virtual and in-person, and including any sub-groups or committees) will be posted to the Member Mail List to allow Members to make sure they are being correctly reported. Minutes will be considered Final when approved at a subsequent Forum Meeting or Forum Teleconference, or after 2 weeks have elapsed since publication of the draft if no Forum Meeting or Forum Teleconference is imminent. Final minutes will then be posted to the Public Mail List and Public Web Site. The Chair will, upon request, make redactions of any part of the public copy of the minutes identified as private or sensitive by either the information discloser or a member mentioned or affiliated with the subject of the information. *** 5.2 Public Mail List and Public Web Site ***The following materials shall be posted to the Public Mail List or Public Web Site: (b) Final minutes of Forum Meetings and Forum Teleconferences (including minutes of any sub-groups or committees), and minutes of all Working Group teleconferences and meetings. *** Our IPR Policy does not allow Members to file Exclusion Notices relating to Guidelines (i.e., claims of IP that are not available to others on a royalty-free basis) if their "Contributions" are incorporated into a Guideline. See definition of Contributions below - this shows the importance of keeping Minutes of working group meetings for some years, especially such working groups as the Validation Working Group, which worked on new methods for domain validation under BR 3.2.2.4. IPR 4.2 Excluding Patents and/or Patent Applications From Royalty Free Licensing Obligations During Review Period. Except for Essential Claims encompassed by a Participant's Contributions that are actually incorporated into a Final Guideline or Final Maintenance Guideline approved in accordance with the CAB Forum Guideline approval process, Participants may within the Review Period exclude Essential Claims from the CAB Forum RF License. "Contribution" means material, including Draft Guidelines, Draft Guideline text, and modifications to other Contributions, made verbally or in a tangible form of expression (including in electronic media) which is provided by a Participant in the process of developing a Draft Guideline for the purpose of incorporating such material into a Draft Guideline or a Final Guideline or Final Maintenance Guideline. For a verbal contribution to be deemed a Contribution hereunder it must be memorialized within approved meeting minutes of the CAB Forum. In tracking Contributions made by members in past working group meetings, the most useful Minutes will include significant details of who said what at each meeting. However, I know from experience that this can take a great deal of time, and we may not always find volunteers to write such detailed Minutes. There is a recording function connected with Turbobridge, which we can access when writing Minutes for full CABF teleconferences. The recordings can also be downloaded easily. So here is my suggestion for how working groups proceed from this point forward: 1. Make sure every working group uses Turbobridge and has the recording function turned on. 2. Download the recordings at least monthly, and store them where we can retrieve them months or years later. Where is the best place for that? (Ben, can we download and save all existing recordings now?) Because of the sensitivity of recordings, I think we should consider amending our Bylaws to allow all members to listen to recordings, but not to distribute recordings to others unless they have the permission of all the members on the recording. 3. As to the written minutes for working groups, we need a careful list of who participated on each call or meeting. In most cases I think the text of the Minutes can be a summary of the topics discussed, a summary of what each participant said on each subject showing whether or not the participant made a "Contribution", and a summary of decisions and actions taken. I don't think we need actual transcripts or verbatim Minutes of all the back-and-forth, just the main details of who contributed - if we later want more details to confirm the Minutes, we can go back to the recordings for that. So far IP Exclusion Notices have been filed only for domain validation methods, so we may want to make the Minutes of Validation Working Group meetings a bit more detailed than for other working groups. I suggest each working group confirm at the start of a teleconference who will write the Minutes, and the draft Minutes then be circulated to the working group members for approval on their next call, then published to the Public list and posted to the wiki.
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