[802SEC] RE: <802.11Technical> IMPORTANT-ACTION REQUIRED FOR BRIEF EMAIL BALLOT
As I pointed out at the closing plenary (and will no doubt be pilloried for
mentioning here) the TGg draft does not meet the requirements set forth in
our operating rules to be sent for letter ballot. The operating rules state
the following:
2.8.2 Draft Standard Balloting Requirements
Before a draft is submitted to WG letter ballot it shall in addition have
met the following requirements:
a) It must be complete with no open technical issues.
And
e) It must be approved for submittal to WG ballot at the 802.11 WG closing
plenary.
It is clear that the draft created at the interim meeting does not meet
either of these criteria.
The first criterion is debatable. Some may consider that the lack of a
PICS, of MIB additions, and of changes to the MAC state machine that
correspond to the changes to the MAC proposed in the text do not constitute
"incompleteness". I disagree. You are asked by this motion to judge the
technical completeness, not technical correctness of the draft. Each of the
items listed here would require a 75% approval to include in the draft.
They are therefore technical. Their lack in the draft makes it incomplete.
Look at the 802.11b supplement to the 802.11 standard fro an example of what
is required to be complete.
You will be told that "this is the way it has been done before. Look at
802.11b, it is still not correct, we just had to do that corrigendum thing."
This is a red herring, attempting to make you look away from the real issue.
The corrigendum has to do with CORRECTNESS, not COMPLETENESS.
You, as a voting member of 802.11, are being asked to make a significant
investment of your time to conduct a full technical review of a draft
standard, at the risk of losing your voting rights if you do not respond.
It is incumbent on the task group creating this draft to have completed its
work, to the best of its ability and knowledge, before asking you to accept
this obligation. It is my opinion that they have not completed their work.
It was stated in the January closing plenary that the editor "was working on
the MIB text". Obviously, the task group knows the draft is not complete,
if the editor is working on text creation.
The second criterion is not debatable. This draft was not approved at any
802.11 WG closing plenary. Even if the plenary in November "empowered" the
action proposed by this motion, it did so in violation of its own operating
rules. This draft did not exist in November and was in no way "approved" at
that time. This draft also was not approved in the closing plenary of the
802.11 WG in January.
Contrary to the statements made in the email announcing this ballot, there
ARE certain procedures required to forward a draft to WG letter ballot.
There are very good reasons for the existence of these procedures.
Therefore because I am certain that this motion will not be withdrawn even
though it violates our operating rules, I ask that you vote against the
motion.
-Bob O'Hara
-----Original Message-----
From: Stuart Kerry [mailto:stuart.kerry@philips.com]
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 2:04 PM
To: stds-802-11@ieee.org
Cc: Stuart.Kerry@philips.com
Subject: <802.11Technical> IMPORTANT-ACTION REQUIRED FOR BRIEF EMAIL BALLOT
Importance: High
To 802.11 Colleagues-
Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, the closing plenary of 802.11
was adjourned prematurely. A more careful review of the minutes from the
Austin meeting revealed that a motion was passed to empower the working
group to issue the 11g draft at the January 2002 meeting. Procedurally, no
further vote was required, but in the confusion, this was not realized until
it was too late. The exact wording of that motion is: "Move to empower
802.11 to issue a WG letter ballot on the 802.11g draft at the January 2002
interim session" (59,0,2).
Following these events I called a meeting to discuss the issues. It was
attended by myself, Harry Worstel, Al Petrick, Vic Hayes, Bob Heile and Paul
Nikolich, chair of 802, on the phone. The meeting was later joined by
Matthew Shoemake. Although it was agreed that a letter ballot could be
initiated without further action, based on the Austin motion, I decided it
would be best to initiate a brief 5 day email ballot to gain the
affirmation of the Working Group membership. Such ballots are within the
chair's prerogative and in discussion with Paul, are consistent with 802
Executive Committee precedence.
The 5 day email ballot will be called LB 31 and consists of the following:
Motion: Begin a 40 day Working Group letter ballot of TGg Draft 2.1,
starting at noon CST on Jan 31, 2002 and ending at noon CST on March 11,
2002
This email ballot is procedural and will require 50% approval of those
voting yes or no in order to pass . Based on the current voting roster of
287, a minimum of 144 voters must return ballots. There can be no more than
30% abstentions of all votes as stated in the 802 rules.
Vote YES, NO, or ABSTAIN. No comments are required as there will be no
resolution of the no votes. Because of the brief nature of this ballot, if
for some reason you can not vote, it will not impact your voting rights.
Ballots should be returned to stuart.kerry@philips.com with copies to
apetrick@icefyre.com and hworstell@research.att.com.
Please put LB31-{your last name}-{y,n,a} in the subject line of your
return email. example (LB31-Kerry-yes)
This ballot will begin immediately and end at 2359 CST on January 30,2002
-------------------------
We also discussed the balance of business that remained on the agenda. TGe
had hoped to bring a rules change proposal to the floor. Based on the length
of the TGg discussion,however, it was unlikely we would have had time for it
anyway before the hard stop at noon. Regardless, the chairs advisory core
will meet next week to review the presentation/interpretation of the Working
Group rules and make a recommendation for action at the opening session in
St. Louis.
Additionally, Vic was unable to formally secure WG approval on the
Regulatory submissions, but these documents were reviewed and approved in
TGh ( 23,0,2) and in 802.15 (unanimous consent). Based on that approval,
it was decided to pass them through to the 802 Executive Committee for final
review and then send them on to their destination without loss of time.
I want to thank you for a very productive week and regret that it ended on a
bit of an unfortunate note. I believe with these actions we can feel proud
that we have accomplished all that we set out to do even if it was by a
slightly circuitous route.
Regards
Stuart J Kerry
.