Subject: RE: I would like to see this (and future) votes held according to the rules.
From: Dennis Brophy (dennisb@Model.com)
Date: Mon Sep 30 2002 - 09:20:46 PDT
Yatin,
I don't want to add fuel to an issue on voting in Accellera technical
groups, but as pointed out in the attached email, there are several features
outlined in the organization's bylaws that Accellera need to familiarize you
and all the Technical Subcommittees. Those include (1) classes of
membership, (2) voting privileges and (3) objection procedures.
The Board had directed the creation of a special committee to ensure the
rules of Accellera are part of each committee's work guidelines. This work
is still not complete unfortunately otherwise you would have gotten that
information instead of this email.
In general, the Technical Committee and Subcommittees are given freedom to
organize as they see best fit to accomplish their goals. There are a few
constraints placed on them by the organization. I would like to familiarize
you with these constraints.
(1) Accellera has three classes of membership: Corporate, Associate
Corporate and Individual. You can find a list of Corporate and
Associate Corporate members at http://www.accellera.org/member.html.
If you would like more information on membership in Accellera,
you can contact the organization's administrator, Lynn Horobin, at
lynn@accellera.org. Lynn will offer 50% reduction in membership
fees to any person or entity that wishes to join the organization
as a Corporate or Associate Corporate member from now until the
beginning of the new membership year in 2003.
(2) Only Corporate and Associate Corporate members may cast votes
when a vote of a Technical Subcommittee is called. And, when
these votes are cast, only one vote per company is allowed.
When a Technical Subcommittee votes to approve a standard,
specification or guideline, two-thirds of the Technical Subcommittee
eligible to vote is required.
Industry consensus is important and participation by technical
experts is encouraged. Individual member participation is
guaranteed. Individual members may be members of a Technical
Subcommittee and may actively participate in Technical Subcommittee
business activities, but are not eligible to vote on such issues
as may be brought forward for a decision by the Technical
Subcommittee.
Voting privileges may be extended to Individual members by a vote
of the Board. It is the responsibility of the Technical Committee
Chair to place such items for approval on the Board's agenda.
I suggest you work with Vassilios if you have such individual
participants in your team.
(3) By written petition of 25% of the Corporate Members, any matter
voted by a Technical Subcommittee or Technical Committee may be
brought to the Technical Committee or Board for approval or
disapproval. Just to ensure everyone knows there is a path to
challenge any vote, I thought it best to share the petition
mechanism with you.
During the formation of Accellera, we knew it was important to maintain the
financial health of the organization to underwrite and fund the creation the
specifications of the technical teams. To encourage membership, voting in
the technical committees was determined to be the best motivating factor.
For the systems and semiconductor companies, you expect EDA companies to be
members of Accellera. And many EDA companies are. EDA companies recognize
that systems and semiconductor companies are challenged to participate in an
even broader set of industry coalition, standards groups and initiatives.
We know you cannot participate in all of them, but we trust your assessment
of the leverage that the work of Accellera gives your teams. For those of
you working in the
In special regards to the IEEE 1364 participants, I personally thought this
was a joint effort. As such, one would assume the natural outcome would be
to share in the approval process. Accellera's Board may well need to
recognize this officially and I will discuss this more with the
organization. Since the email below is from the chair of the IEEE 1364, in
addition to his other affiliations, I suspect a judgment that a state of
official collaboration exists is not fully solidified. We will work towards
the organization's explicit position on that status.
I understand any email on this topic can be quite contentious, and if anyone
wishes to speak to me regarding it, don't hesitate to contact me.
Regards,
Dennis
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael McNamara [mailto:mac@verisity.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 3:02 PM
To: Dennis Brophy
Subject: I would like to see this (and future) votes held according to
the rules.
Ref:
Yatin Trivedi writes:
> Hi all,
> As chair and co-chair of SV-CC we would like to explain what
> it means to vote on and accept the donation.
>
> When Accellera set out to enhance Verilog, and later System Verilog,
> the board and TCC invited technical donations from Accellera members
> (and industry at large). These donations were technical proposals in
> the form of documents that described either actual implementation or
> work in progress as it would relate to Verilog or System Verilog.
>
> The acceptance of donation implies that there is enough knowledge by
> committee members to take the donation and use it as a basis for the
> work of the committee. This is intended as a jump start to establish
> the direction of the effort for the committee. The acceptance of the
> donation would allow the committee to evaluate each item in the
> document for further analysis in the context of the requirements.
> The committee can debate and agree to change, add, or delete certain
> items in the document to suit the requirements.
>
>
> The voting policy, as established by Accellera board, is modified a
> little to allow larger participation in the voting process. Here
> are the rules:
>
> * Only Accellera member companies may vote. An exception is provided
> for those individuals/companies who were part of System Verilog 3.0
> effort and had voting rights. This exception is still subject to
> meeting other requirements.
>
> * Vote on technical issues will be a simple majority of all
> attendees (not limited to one per company)
>
> * All procedural and final (accept donation, LRM) approvals (other
> items at the chair's discretion) will follow the one vote per
> company rule. Each company has a designate (with proxy support).
> IEEE members, who are not an Accellera member or commercial
> affiliation will have an indivdual vote as well.
>
> * Accellera guideline is to allow anyone (subject to membership
> requirement) with 75% attendance in all meetings or 3 out of
> last 4 meetings to vote. For the purpose of this particular vote,
> TCC chair has agreed that we can allow larger voting particiaption
> by anyone (subject to membership requirement) who has attended
> 50% of all meetings or 2 of the last 4 meetings.
>
> Note: We will send a note directly to those who are eligible to vote.
>
> If you have questions or comments, please send an email directly
> to Ghassan and Yatin. Let's not discuss the voting policy on the
> reflector for the sake of keeping it focused on technical topics.
>
> Regards
>
> Yatin
>
Dennis: As you pointed out to us very clearly in both an officers
meeting, and during the recent Accellera Board Meeting, there is no
basis for a vote in any technical committee, board meeting, or other
activity of Accellera other than a single vote by the designated
representative of each corporate member. IEEE members do not get a
vote. Multiple individuals of member companies do not get a vote.
This proposal from Yatin enfranchises folks that should not be given a
vote.
As board members of Accellera, we must either:
1) Inform Yatin and Vassilious that they must conduct this and all
votes according to the rules stated in Resolution 17; (hence only
corporate members may vote) or
2) Make a special proposal at the board level to allow this vote to be
conducted as Yatin outlines; or
3) Amend resolution 17 to enfranchise IEEE members as Yatin proposes;
and allow individual mmbers of technical committees to vote on small
issues.
For the past two years the technical committees have been acting out
of order with the bylaws of Accellera; however only a few board
members were aware of this fact.
If the Accellera Board allows this and subsequent votes to be
conducted in direct violation of Resolution 17, it will unnecessarily
continue the very, very bad state the technical committees are
operating, with the entire Board very much aware that the technical
committees are violating the bylaws of Accellera.
Two issues that cry out for attention: the one person one vote is
directly outlawed by Resolution 17. The enfranchisement of IEEE
members is directly ruled out by Resolution 17.
Please make it right.
-mac
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