[odf-discuss] Problems at the OASIS TC.

[Daniel]

Hello all,

Yesterday I received an email from OASIS explaining that my membership 
at the OASIS OpenDocument committee will be revoked. David Wheeler, head 
of the formula sub-committee (spreadsheet formulae) got a similar email. 
Bruce D'Arcus, head of the metadata sub-committee got a similar email. 
Marbux got a similar email.

What happened?

Well, we, along with another 12 people, are all in OASIS as non-employee 
representatives of the OpenDocument Foundation, a US-based non-profit 
run by Gary Edwards. It turns out that non-profits are only allowed to 
have two non-employee representatives (and that's two more than any 
company). I learnt yesterday that OASIS has been discussing this issue 
with Gary for some time.

I'm not too bothered about my removal, I'm not important. But I'm 
concerned about the removal of Bruce D'Arcus and David Wheeler. Those 
are two people who do invaluable ODF work at the OASIS TC and now are 
being removed.

Can the Fellowship do anything? Does anyone have any ideas? The 
membership fees for OASIS are high:

http://www.oasis-open.org/join/categories.php

The cheapest way to get Bruce and David back on the TC would be 
individual membership which costs 300 USD each. That's well outside what 
the Fellowship has at hand, but maybe there's a way to raise that money? 
Maybe find a sponsor or do some sort of fund raiser?

I don't know what we can do.

Oh, I just got another email from OASIS... I (and apparently others) 
explained that this whole discussion was news to us. Among other things, 
they pointed us to fee-waved memberships:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/liaison_policy.php#fee-wavedgrants

It says here that the TC chair can ask for a fee waved membership for 
people who are very important. So I guess that Bruce and David might get 
that. I hope they do.

Cheers,
Daniel.