The Consortium is financially self-supporting, through membership fees. Membership in the Consortium is open to any operating organization agreeing to the terms of this agreement. These terms apply to membership during the period beginning October 1, 1994 through September 30, 1997. If the organization is itself a consortium, user society, or otherwise has members or sponsors, the rights and privileges granted under this agreement extend only to the paid employees of the organization, not to the members or sponsors.
To be considered by the Consortium, a proposal must be sponsored by a member organization and must include a complete draft specification of interfaces and functionality. The draft specification need not originate through a Consortium-sponsored design process. The sponsoring organization should present the proposal to the Consortium Director for formal consideration, and designate an individual who will act as an Architect for the specification. The Director then ensures that the proposal is circulated to all Advisory Committee representatives, and a one month trial review is begun. The purpose of the trial review is to determine if the Consortium should conduct a technical review of the specification, and to allow member organizations to prepare sufficient resources to conduct that technical review. At the end of the trial review, each Advisory Committee representative is asked to give the Director a Yes/No vote. A No vote, to not proceed with a technical review, must be accompanied with comments to explain the vote. The Director considers the votes, and makes an informed decision as to whether to proceed with the technical review.
If the decision is to proceed, then a three month technical review begins. A Web posting and an electronic mailing list will be created at MIT for discussion; participation on this list is open to all member organizations, without constraint. As issues are raised during the review, it is expected that participants will vote (formally or informally) on how to resolve the issues. The Architect will consider the votes, and make an informed decision. Meetings may be called, as deemed necessary by the participants or the Director.
At the end of the technical review period, each Advisory Committee representative is asked to give the Director a Yes/No/Not-Yet vote. A No vote, to discontinue the review and reject the specification, must be accompanied with comments to explain the vote. A Not-Yet vote indicates that the specification either needs substantially more design work, or that the complexity of the specification requires a longer review cycle. A Not-Yet vote also must be accompanied with comments to explain the vote. The Director will consider the votes, and make an informed decision as to whether to proceed to the next stage of the process, or to extend the technical review, or to dismiss the specification without prejudice and ask the sponsor to resubmit after redesign, or to reject the specification.
If the specification is accepted, then a three month public review begins. The Director will make a reasonable effort to distribute the specification to the public, primarily by posting on the Web. Any issues raised during this review must be answered by the Architect in conjunction with the review participants, in the same way as during the technical review. In parallel with the public review, a ``proof of concept'' implementation of the specification should be undertaken. Proof of concept typically requires a complete, public, portable implementation, but a public implementation is not a requirement and alternatives can be proposed on a case by case basis. Any issues raised during the implementation effort will be handled in the same way as during the technical review.
When public review has ended and the Director believes proof of concept has been established, each Advisory Committee representative is asked to give the Director a Yes/No vote. A Yes vote indicates that proof of concept has been demonstrated, and the specification should now be accepted as a standard. A No vote indicates that proof of concept has not yet been demonstrated. A No vote must be accompanied with comments to explain the vote. The Director will consider the votes, and make an informed decision as to whether to accept the specification, or to restart the specification at some earlier stage in the overall process.
Once a standard has been approved, the Web posting and mailing list will continue to be used to discuss possible clarifications or additions to the standard. The Director will appoint an Architect for such changes; this Architect may differ from the original Architect. Resolution of issues is handled in the same way as during previous technical reviews. The Director has final authority on all decisions. Major changes to the standard will require the full trial/technical/public review process, at the discretion of the Director.
MIT may but is not required to propose standards before national or international formal standards bodies; individual member organizations may assume that initiative. The Consortium will attempt to provide technical assistance and advice to standards bodies, and will participate in the formal standards process as resources permit.
The MIT staff will provide a public network path for reporting problems with and suggesting changes to this collection. The MIT staff will maintain a database of such bug reports and an archive of bug fixes, and this information will be available to member organizations as it is generated, using a Web posting and network mail. A small subset of the most crucial bug fixes will be made available to the public; the subset will be chosen by the MIT staff under the guidance of the Director.
Member organizations can incorporate software and documentation produced by the MIT staff into products at any time after the materials have been released to the Consortium. Member organizations shall not adopt or incorporate such releases into products prior to release to the Consortium. Materials are considered released once they have been explicitly distributed to member organizations, or once they have been made accessible over the network in a form explicitly marked as a Consortium release.
The MIT staff will also endeavor to collect and distribute software contributed by other individuals and organizations as well as by member organizations. MIT will accept such third party software only with appropriate representations of sufficient right, title and interest to contribute the software, but will bear no responsibility if contributed software should prove to be infringing. In addition, the MIT staff will not be responsible for maintaining such software. The contents and release schedule for the contributed software collection will be determined by the Consortium Director and staff.
In general, all materials included in Consortium-sponsored distributions will be copyrighted, and will contain permission notices granting unrestricted use and redistribution of the materials provided that copyrights and permission notices are left intact. Specific exceptions can be made, upon approval of the Director at the advice of the Advisory Committee. All materials are provided "as is", without express or implied warranty.