[vhdl-200x] 1076 & Entity balloting

Steve and Peter,
At the March 2004 meeting we discussed entity
and individual balloting and we tenatively decided
that individual balloting was what we wanted.

I am not convinced that having corporate membership
in IEEE SA is a way to get more funds. At the
DASC SC meeting IEEE SA representatives made it
very clear that neither IEEE SA individual nor
IEEE corporate dues were contributed to working
groups. Why would a company want to spend $1000
or more in a corporate membership for IEEE SA
just to be able to donate money to our working
group?

It sounds like what IEEE SA wants is for us to have
is a separate consortium that funds our efforts.
A separate consortium that supports VHDL would
offer similar corporate recognition provided by
IEEE SA without the additional overhead of IEEE SA.
For packages trial standards could be formed by
having consortium standards that would lead to
IEEE standards. Since they would be consortium
standards first, I think we also avoid some of the
copyritht issues with packages. If not, packages
could be standardized only by the consortium.

I stand firmly against Entity type organization
unless individual balloting can be done with
just an individual membership. My current understanding
is that to ballot (in IEEE SA), one must have a
IEEE SA corporate membership which is a minimum
of $1000.

Entity balloting is an appropriate mechanism to use
when all companies participating have a direct
financial benefit from a standard. For EDA vendors
this is clearly true. For users, this is harder to
demonstrate.

I have worked hard to encourage user participation
in the VHDL standards process. Excluding users in
balloting and WG voting membership would destroy
everything I have been working toward.

When you consider Peter's motion for changes to the
par, please vote item 11 separately from ietm 13.
My preference is for individual membership.

Cheers,
Jim

P.S.
Organizing as entity membership would invalidate
our current officers as each would be required to
be a voting member of the working group and with
entity membership there is only one member per
company.
Received on Mon Jun 21 00:38:46 2004