Subject: RE: I would like to see this (and future) votes held according to the rules.
From: Michael McNamara (mac@verisity.com)
Date: Mon Sep 30 2002 - 09:42:26 PDT
To clear up possible confusion, I am very happy with whatever rules
Accellera's board approves. In particular, I would be very happy if
the Accellera Board approves rules that allow IEEE members a vote.
However, Accellera has not done this yet. The current rules, as the
Accellera Chair cites, are very specific about voting. We must either
follow them, or change them. Ignoring them is not a viable option.
I was part of a board sub-committee that put forth a proposal that
included changing the voting rules to the Accellera Board; this
proposal was not heard due to procedural issues. I do hope the
proposal does get heard, or that some other motion is made by another
party which brings this matter to the Board immediately, the Board
votes, and we have rules that are clear to all, and we then run our
technical committees this way.
Dennis Brophy writes:
> 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
> [2 <text/html; iso-8859-1 (quoted-printable)>]
>
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