XEP-0345: Form of Membership Applications

NOTICE: This Procedural document proposes that the process or activity defined herein shall be followed by the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF). However, this process or activity has not yet been approved by the XMPP Council and/or the XSF Board of Directors and is therefore not currently in force.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Prior to this specification, membership applications have been relatively informal, and guidance has been similarly ad-hoc. This document provides the form of membership applications, which is part of the remit of the XSF Board.

The intent is to provide as few rules as possible, but ensure that the XSF has the essential information required to make a decision on the application.

2. Who May Apply

Although at the time this document was written, the XSF has only ever had "natural persons" - that is, ordinary people - apply for membership, the XSF Bylaws [1] explicitly allow for corporate membership. In order to ensure the form of an application can satisfy this, this document will assume such applications may occur in the future.

This document will distinguish requirements by using the term "Applicant" to mean either type, "Natural Applicant" for actual people, and "Corporate Applicant" for legal entities other than natural persons.

3. Where Applications Are Submitted

Applications are to be submitted as a new Wiki Page on the XSF Wiki, and linked from a single Wiki page which will be included in the announcement email sent by the XSF Secretary.

Applicants are solely responsible for their own applications, and the applications shall be their own. Members and prospective members should not edit anyone else's application. Exceptions to this latter shall be made only with permission of the Board, the XSF Secretary, or the Executive Director; and the Applicant concerned.

4. Challenges and Final Arbiter

In the case that a particular application is questionable for some reason - if it is thought to be missing mandatory information or failing to disclose affiliations - a member may raise a Challenge with the membership, by sending a message to the members list detailing the issues. A member request a member of the XSF Board of Directors [2] to raise the Challenge anonymously on their behalf; the member of the Board however is in no way compelled to do so.

The XSF Board is the final arbiter of such Challenges, and shall make a final decision on whether the application should be rejected; however the Board is expected to take into account any rough consensus of the members. Any rejection will include any remedies possible.

Notwithstanding the final nature of the XSF Board's decision, any application so rejected may be resubmitted by the Applicant, presumably after addressing the issues.

5. Mandatory Information

The purpose of the mandatory information is to allow the XSF Secretary sufficient information to adhere to the XSF Bylaws. As a secondary purpose, it also allows the XSF members to make an informed decision when voting to accept applications; it is important for Applicants to understand that this mandatory information is unlikely to be sufficient to convince the members, however.

6. Security Considerations

There are privacy implications inherent in the public disclosure of the information in an Application, particularly by a Natural Applicant.

These are an unavoidable consequence of the Application.

7. IANA Considerations

This document has no considerations for IANA.

8. XMPP Registrar Considerations

This document has no considerations for the XMPP Registrar.

Appendices

Appendix A: Document Information

Series: XEP
Number: 0345
Publisher: XMPP Standards Foundation
Status: Experimental
Type: Procedural
Version: 0.1
Last Updated: 2014-03-19
Approving Body: XSF Board of Directors
Dependencies: None
Supersedes: None
Superseded By: None
Short Name: N/A
Source Control: HTML
This document in other formats: XML  PDF

Appendix B: Author Information

Appendix C: Legal Notices

Appendix D: Relation to XMPP

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined in the XMPP Core (RFC 6120) and XMPP IM (RFC 6121) specifications contributed by the XMPP Standards Foundation to the Internet Standards Process, which is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in accordance with RFC 2026. Any protocol defined in this document has been developed outside the Internet Standards Process and is to be understood as an extension to XMPP rather than as an evolution, development, or modification of XMPP itself.

Appendix E: Discussion Venue

The primary venue for discussion of XMPP Extension Protocols is the <standards@xmpp.org> discussion list.

Discussion by the membership of the XSF might also be appropriate (see <http://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/members> for details).

Errata can be sent to <editor@xmpp.org>.

Appendix F: Requirements Conformance

The following requirements keywords as used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119: "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".

Appendix G: Notes

Appendix H: Revision History

Note: Older versions of this specification might be available at http://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/

END