Re: Issue with P1647 Working Group

Dennis:

In all this debate one should not forget that dominance is of two kinds,
acceptable
and unacceptable.

After, or if, the dominance is recognised, further conditions have to be
checked to
identify unacceptable dominance. The definition is such as to avoid
affecting (read
"killing") projects by omission. In other words, no participation does not
qualify
as "voices of the minority are ignored or not heard", because non
participation
does not create voices, and absent people do not qualify as dominated
members.

You might imply that other groups of people were so much dominated
that they do not participate anymore. I do not buy this close to sophism
rationale.

Also your
"Just compare the P1800 email reflector
email exchanges - 1000's of messages - and compare this to the 100's for
P1647."

resonates for me only with

"more work, less talk" (maybe with a ",," double comma to match repetition
of "compare")

anything wrong with that?

Next we might hear for example that if Accellera chose to pass
on an invitation to be present with at least a report at the 100th
anniversary of the IEC, would mean that the IEC is dominated by
other organizations.

Kind regards,

Alex Zamfirescu


On 9/11/06, Brophy, Dennis <dennisb@model.com> wrote:
>
> Darren,
>
> In regards to your suggested solution:
>
> >2) Synopsys and Mentor employees are free to join DASC and the P1647
> Working Group if they so wish. In fact, >you don't even have to pay to
> belong to a standards organization to be on the P1647 Working Group.
>
> Although this is clear and obvious - having more members on either or
> both the DASC or P1647 team from Mentor and Synopsys would cure the
> dominance issue - there is no obligation on either enmity to cure this
> problem with their participation.
>
> In the last two years the IEEE SA has refined its dominance rules from
> the one hurdle at the sponsor ballot to actual operation of the group
> today.
>
> At this moment, my concern is the DASC may have a structure that
> actually works against it to offer easy proof that its operation is not
> dominated either in the majority or minority by a block of voters.  In
> addition to specific dominance issues, we may wish to reflect on how the
> organization can be best defined to ensure better balance.
>
> At the start of the P1647 group several years back, several hundred
> participants from Verisity sent a chill over the group to ensure that if
> there were to be balanced technical discussion with equal input from
> others, it would have to be met with similar membership numbers.  It is
> almost impossible to argue against this as a clear dominance tactic
> today.  It is.
>
> I also have concerns that deliberations and debate on issues are not
> well conducted in the open.  Just compare the P1800 email reflector
> email exchanges - 1000's of messages - and compare this to the 100's for
> P1647.  When debate and work is not conducted in the light of day, there
> are no others to object - the conclusion I come to is dominance by the
> majority has been ingrained and institutionalized that there is no room
> for others to participate.
>
> -Dennis
>
> Note: I've been away from reading a lot of my email for the last 10
> days, so I'm going to have to catch up on all the emails that have been
> sent out recently.  So, this is why there is a delay in my response to
> your message.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-stds-dasc-sc@server.eda.org
> [mailto:owner-stds-dasc-sc@server.eda.org] On Behalf Of
> darren.galpin@infineon.com
> Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 12:54 AM
> To: Bailey, Stephen; jim@SynthWorks.com; Karen.Bartleson@synopsys.com
> Cc: gmoretti@comcast.net; alex.zamfirescu@gmail.com; yaron@cadence.com;
> stds-dasc-sc@server.eda.org; stds-dasc@server.eda.org;
> 1647-l@ieee1647.org
> Subject: RE: Issue with P1647 Working Group
>
> For what it is worth (probably not much in the scheme of things), let me
> add my views on this.
>
> Firstly, let me point out that I am not affiliated to any of the big 3
> EDA vendors, but am a member of DASC who is affiliated to a
> semiconductor company. Having examined the barrage of e-mails in my
> Inbox this morning, a couple of things strike me:
>
> 1) The complainants are from Synopsys and Mentor, and the complaints are
> about Cadence. Was it ever not thus? In fact, if you examine the DASC
> membership list, the top three affiliated organisations are Cadence,
> Synopsys and Mentor, in that order.
>
> 2) Synopsys and Mentor employees are free to join DASC and the P1647
> Working Group if they so wish. In fact, you don't even have to pay to
> belong to a standards organisation to be on the P1647 Working Group.
>
>
> The entire issue of dominance needs much more clarification. For
> instance, if two or more organisations act in concert together and each
> have a number of members on a group, does the combination of the two
> together constitute dominance? Not according to the rules quoted, even
> though the combination of the two acts as a single entity
>
> I understand the complaints from Stephen Bailey and Karen Bartleson, and
> there may indeed have been a technical violation of the rules, but I
> can't help but view such comments in light of public statements from
> both of their respective companies about other standards which have been
> developed. There is more than a hint of self-interest for Synopsys and
> Mentor in making such complaints. Are any other members of DASC outside
> of the big 3 EDA vendors, or any other working groups, particularly
> worried about such dominance and wish to raise this as an issue?
>
> However, even adding together the total membership of the big 3 vendors
> of the DASC committee, this still comes out to be less than the total of
> all other members, so even together the EDA vendors don't have control.
> So Cadence has a large voice, but not a controlling one.
>
> This entire problem has arisen due to the merger of two companies into
> one, with the resulting aggregation of the votes of two into one. What
> would be better would be to establish a code within the DASC guidelines
> for what should be expected to happen under such circumstances if it
> alters the balance of voting rights within any committee. Before the
> merger of Verisity and Cadence, they both had more affiliated members
> than any other company, and the merger has just highlighted this more
> starkly.
>
> This is all in danger of becoming another bun fight along the lines of
> the one a year or so ago when there were accusations levelled about
> conflicts of interest re the P1647 vote from certain members whose
> companies themselves had a conflict of interest (in my view at least).
> Given what has gone before, I find it difficult to believe that all of
> these accusations are made in good faith rather than for commercial
> advantage. Please make me pleasantly surprised by how you conduct this
> discussion and investigate the issue, rather than reinforcing my cynical
> view of this.
>
> Regards (and diving for cover......),
>
>
> Darren
>
>


-- 
Alex Zamfirescu
650-814-7514
alex.zamfirescu@gmail.com
http://alex.zamfirescu.googlepages.com