[cabfpub] Ballot process ordering

[Ryan Sleevi]

More concretely to the discussion of the F2F, which does not yet appear in
the draft minutes, and for which a recording would be necessary to fully
reconstruct arguments from those on the call (Virginia) or in the room
(Jeremy), during the F2F, I discussed and disagreed with Virginia's
statements that the current IPR policy was largely modeled after the W3C
Patent Policy ( https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/ ) and
that the Position 1 reflected that document.

During this discussion, I highlighted the W3C process of Call for
Exclusions being contingent upon the adoption of a Working Draft, which
itself is a consensus-driven process of the relevant WG, and the similar
advancements along the REC track.

In particular, I was discussing the following sections -
https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Disclosure - and
the process of Disclosure Requests and the Exclusion Process triggered by
document maturity -
https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-exclusion-with

To expand and draw upon that parallel, which I raised in the F2F, the W3C
Model of disclosure triggers after the formal adoption of a Working Draft,
which is a maturity level beyond that of Editor's Draft.

An example of this process working can be seen at
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-tvcontrol/2016Sep/0013.html ,
which is the result of the following Call for Consensus formally adopting
the document -
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-tvcontrol/2016Aug/0012.html

This process is described in
https://www.w3.org/2015/Process-20150901/#first-wd and
https://www.w3.org/2015/Process-20150901/#transition-reqs

Notably, this transition involves the development of Consensus prior to the
adoption of the First Public Working Draft, which then triggers the Call
for Exclusions.

Position 1 does not provide for similar consensus building - by virtue of
the non-binding straw poll or by the simple 3 endorser support - and thus
does meaningfully differ in terms of the obligations imposed on members,
and more importantly, the ability to abuse the process for exploratory
investigations. Given that unpublished patents are within the scope of the
disclosure requirements, Position 1's process can be abused to explore
members' portfolios - a point I spoke to at the F2F as a concern regarding
skipping "consensus"
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