The following framework was adopted by the NymIP-RG on Novemberer 20, 2000. Members stating their intention to adopt the framework were:
Silent on the subject of adopting the framework were:
No members actively objected to the adoption of this framework.
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The NymIP Research Group (hereafter "NymIP-RG" or "RG") is constituted under the following loose set of rules. This is intended as a basic operating framework, not as a formal set of by-laws, just as the research group itself is an informal organization.
The purposes of the NymIP-RG are--
These rules are designed to facilitate the work of the RG, and to provide a structure in which that work can proceed without undue hindrance. Because of the need for the RG not only to be independent, but to be perceived as such, these rules provide a basic set of formal structures for the management of the RG, the selection of its members and officers, and the exercise of its control over the overall NymIP effort.
The following RG business matters are conducted by votes of the core members:
All other RG business is conducted by rough consensus, managed by the RG Chair. In determining consensus, the Chair is to include the opinions of both core members and at-large members, weighted according to the participation of those members in relevant work.
The RG shall have no institutional members; members and officers are such as individuals, and remain such regardless of any changes of affiliation.
The core members of the RG are the voting members. The initial core members shall be invited by Zero-Knowledge Systems. Once the RG has been constituted, the core will control its own membership.
A new core member shall be added, with her own permission, upon nomination by at least one fourth of the existing core members, or by five core members, whichever is less. An existing core member may resign at will, or may be removed by the votes of three fourths of the other core members. It is expected that core members will nominate only persons who will make positive contributions, and will vote to remove only persons who have abandoned the RG entirely, or who are clearly impeding progress.
No more frequently than once per month, and no less frequently than once in every six months, the Secretary shall send electronic mail to all core members, requesting that they confirm their continued membership in the core. Each core member shall be given fourteen days to respond affirmatively to such a message. Any core member who three times consecutively fails to respond shall be considered to have resigned.
There is no fixed limit on the number of core members. In general, the core is expected to include everybody who's actively contributing to the project.
The at-large membership of the RG shall consist of the core members, together with all subscribers to the "nymip-rg-interest" mailing list.
By joining the RG, members accept these privacy, security, and pseudonymity rules.
Members, whether core members or at-large members, may participate under pseudonyms. Pseudonymous members need not disclose their "real" names or other identifying information to RG officers or to any other party. Pseudonymous members must, however, disclose their organizational affiliations and potential commercial interests, in sufficient detail to permit other members to reasonably assess the potential for collusion or conflicts of interest. The level of detail required in such disclosures shall be determined by the Chair, and need not necessarily include the names of specific organizations in all cases. No single person may hold multiple core memberships under different identities.
All electronic mail messages posted to the nymip-rg, nymip-rg-interest, or nymip-rg-votes mailing lists are public information. By posting to these lists, the poster implicitly grants irrevocable permission to the RG officers, to all RG members, and to all members of the public, to archive, index, and republish the posted messages, individually or in collections, provided that each republished message is substantially unaltered and properly attributed. Neither technical markings such as "X-No-Archive" headers, nor textual markings embedded in messages, may change this permission.
By posting to the nymip-rg-core-only mailing list, the poster implicitly grants irrevocable permission for all then current core RG members to archive the posted messages for their own use, but not to forward those messages to other parties.
The Secretary may maintain a variety of information about members, either as part of the core roster or as part of a more general member directory. Furthermore, the RG mailing lists, of their nature, include members' electronic mail addresses.
Of this information, the following are public elements:
The public elements shall be made available to any RG member upon request, and may be published on the Worldwide Web. If the information is published on the Worldwide Web, the Secretary and/or the System Administrator shall take appropriate steps to discourage its casual harvesting by automated electronic mail address collections systems, but need not take steps to protect the information from manual collection or from targeted technical attacks.
All other member information collected by the Secretary, including such things as postal mailing addresses and telephone numbers, is to be considered confidential information. Such information is not to be disclosed to anyone other than RG officers or persons performing RG administrative duties under the direction of RG officers, unless such disclosure is specifically authorized by the member involved.
Confidential information, including member information and confidential electronic mail archives, is to be protected to ordinary commercial standards of computer security. Such security is not impenetrable, and RG participants are expected to understand its weaknesses.
Pseudonymous members are responsible for providing security measures to protect the confidentiality of their own real names. Although active attempts to "penetrate" pseudonyms are to be discouraged, such attempts cannot as a practical matter be prevented.
The RG Chair shall initially be elected by majority vote of the core members. The Chair shall serve until her resignation, or until replaced by a vote of the majority of the core members.
The responsibilities of the RG Chair are as follows:
The RG Secretary shall be appointed by the RG Chair, and may be replaced at the pleasure of the Chair.
The responsibilities of the Secretary are as follows--
The Secretary may delegate these tasks to other persons or organizations, including persons or organizations outside the RG, but remains personally responsible for assuring that the tasks are handled properly. The Secretary may solicit voluntary assistance from outside parties.
The RG System Administrator shall be appointed by the RG chair, and may be replaced at the pleasure of the Chair.
The responsibilities of the System Administrator are as follows--
The System Administrator may delegate these tasks to other persons or organizations, including persons or organizations outside the RG, but remains personally responsible for assuring that the tasks are handled properly. The System Administrator, as a volunteer, is expected to provide computing resources at no cost to the RG. The System Administrator may solicit donations of services, but not donations of money, from outside parties.
The "nymip-rg" mailing list is the general discussion list for the NymIP-RG. Moderation policy for this list is set by the Chair. An example policy might be unrestricted posting by core members, and approval required for postings from others.
The System Administrator shall maintain a public archive of all messages posted to the nymip-rg mailing list. Messages shall be retained for no less than one year.
The "nymip-rg-interest" mailing list is a general, unmoderated list for NymIP-RG discussions. Any member of the public is to be permitted to subscribe. Any subscriber is to be permitted to post without restriction. In addition, all material submitted to "nymip-rg", regardless of whether that material is actually accepted for "nymip-rg" posting, is to be sent automatically to "nymip-rg-interest".
The System Administrator shall maintain a public archive of all messages posted to the nymip-rg-interest mailing list. Messages shall be retained for no less than one year.
The "nymip-rg-core-only" mailing list is to reach all RG core members and officers, and only core members and officers. No moderation is to be applied, but the list is to be used primarily for administrative and voting discussions. Technical matters should generally be handled on nymip-rg or nymip-rg-interest, and the officers of the RG shall issue reminders to this effect if core-only discussion appears to be getting out of hand.
Core members may maintain archives of nymip-rg-core-only messages for their own use, but may not forward any message, or otherwise make it available, to anyone not a core member at the time of that message's original posting. No central archive is to be maintained.
All proposals submitted for formal vote by the core members, and all actual votes, are to be sent to nymip-rg-votes, as are all core member nominations. Note that proposals (but not actual votes) must also be sent to nymip-rg. The Secretary shall monitor nymip-rg-votes, and official vote counts shall be based on messages sent to this list. Subscription to nymip-rg-votes is to be open to the public.
The System Administrator shall maintain a public archive of all messages posted to the nymip-rg-votes mailing list. Messages shall be retained for no less than one year.
The RG shall hold at least two in-person meetings per year which shall be open to members of the public, and an indeterminate number of meetings which may be invitational or open only to at-large RG members or only to core members.
The primary purpose of in-person meetings is to permit presentation and discussion of work in progress and of new results. A secondary purpose is to facilitate trust and personal interaction among RG members. In-person meetings are not "business meetings", and formal RG business shall be conducted over electronic mail.
The NymIP-RG is the first formal group to be chartered as part of the overall NymIP effort, and is therefore by default the initial management organization for NymIP as a whole.
As the NymIP effort progresses, it will probably be necessary to pursue goals which are related to NymIP, but which are not research projects of the sort for which the NymIP-RG is suited. The NymIP-RG is authorized to charter other groups for this purpose, or to pass authority for part or all of the NymIP effort to groups or organizations with outside charters (eg IETF working groups).
To charter another NymIP organization, or to pass part or all of the management of the NymIP effort to another organization, requires a vote of two thirds of the RG core members.
The RG shall maintain no treasury, own no property, and enter into no commercial contracts.
All official documents and software produced or adopted by the RG as an organization shall be made available to the public without charge. The RG shall adopt a uniform software license, meeting the Open Source Definition, under which all software published by the RG as an organization shall be released.
Anyone submitting software or a document for the RG's official consideration or use shall be required to permit the RG to redistribute that material without charge, and without any tracking of recipients, to the public at large, for informational purposes. Mere submission does not necessarily require that the public be offered the right to actually use or implement the technology involved.
Some RG members will surely be employees of interested commercial enterprises, and their participation in the RG may arise from their job responsibilities. Such members must disclose their affiliation, but are otherwise permitted to represent the interests of their employers, unless those interests are in direct and irreconcilable conflict with the goals of the RG. Members are expected to distance themselves from votes and discussions in which they may have unresolvable conflicts of interest.
Initial adoption of these rules, or any change to these rules, requires the assent of three fourths of the core members.
Nominations of new core members shall be sent to the "nymip-rg-votes" mailing list. The Secretary shall track nominations, and shall update the core membership list as appropriate. New core members shall be installed immediately upon receiving sufficient nominations. Any nomination may be withdrawn before the candidate has received sufficient nominations to install her as a core member, but not afterward.
The Secretary shall announce all changes to the list of core members to the "nymip-rg" mailing list.
All voting in the RG shall take place via electronic mail. Binding votes shall not be taken at in-person meetings, although straw polls at such meetings are acceptable.
Any core member of the RG may propose any action to be voted upon.
Any proposal for vote shall be sent via electronic mail to both the "nymip-rg" and "nymip-rg-votes" mailing lists. Electronic mail messages representing proposals for voting shall clearly identify themselves as such, and the Secretary shall seek clarification of any ambiguity in this regard.
Voting shall begin immediately upon submission of a proposal.
A core member shall cast a vote by sending an electronic mail message the "nymip-rg-votes" mailing list. A member may vote yes or no, or may choose to explicitly abstain from voting. Any electronic mail message representing a yes or no vote, or indicating abstention, shall clearly state the sending member's voting intention. The Secretary shall seek clarification of any ambiguity.
The voting period shall end when enough votes have been cast, and/or enough abstentions positively indicated, that no further votes can affect the outcome, or when 120 hours have passed from the time the proposal was originally made, whichever is sooner.
Should any member fail to vote on a proposal within 120 hours of its submission, that member shall be treated as having voted "no" on the proposal.
The number of votes required to pass a proposal shall be determined by reducing the size of the core membership by the number of explicitly indicated abstentions. For example, if a proposal requires a three-fourths vote to pass, the core has fifteen members, and three core members indicate that they wish to abstain from voting, then the proposal may be passed with nine "yes" votes.
Unless the proposal itself provides otherwise, a carried proposal shall become effective immediately at the end of the voting period.
Anyone who reads this far shall be entitled to a big, wet kiss from the drafter of these rules.
Members may change their votes before the end of the voting period, but may not change their votes once a proposal has been decided upon.
The Secretary shall maintain an archive of all voting-related electronic mail. Voting-related electronic mail shall include the following:
All proposals submitted to be voted upon.
All messages representing votes or indicating abstention.
Any message which a core member sends to the "nymip-rg-votes" mailing list.
The Secretary's archive of voting-related electronic mail shall be made available, upon request, to any member of the RG.