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Network Working Group                                         R. McGowanRequest for Comments: 3718                                       UnicodeCategory: Informational                                    February 2004A Summary of Unicode Consortium Procedures, Policies, Stability,and Public AccessStatus of this Memo   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this   memo is unlimited.Copyright Notice   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.Abstract   This memo describes various internal workings of the Unicode   Consortium for the benefit of participants in the IETF.  It is   intended solely for informational purposes.  Included are discussions   of how the decision-making bodies of the Consortium work and their   procedures, as well as information on public access to the character   encoding & standardization processes.1.  Introduction   This memo describes various internal workings of the Unicode   Consortium for the benefit of participants in the IETF.  It is   intended solely for informational purposes.  Included are discussions   of how the decision-making bodies of the Consortium work and their   procedures, as well as information on public access to the character   encoding & standardization processes.2.  About The Unicode Consortium   The Unicode Consortium is a corporation.  Legally speaking, it is a   "California Nonprofit Mutual Benefit Corporation", organized undersection 501 C(6) of the Internal Revenue Service Code of the United   States.  As such, it is a "business league" not focussed on profiting   by sales or production of goods and services, but neither is it   formally a "charitable" organization.  It is an alliance of member   companies whose purpose is to "extend, maintain, and promote the   Unicode Standard".  To this end, the Consortium keeps a small office,   a few editorial and technical staff, World Wide Web presence, and   mail list presence.McGowan                      Informational                      [Page 1]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 2004   The corporation is presided over by a Board of Directors who meet   annually.  The Board is comprised of individuals who are elected   annually by the full members for three-year terms.  The Board   appoints Officers of the corporation to run the daily operations.   Membership in the Consortium is open to "all corporations, other   business entities, governmental agencies, not-for-profit   organizations and academic institutions" who support the Consortium's   purpose.  Formally, one class of voting membership is recognized, and   dues-paying members are typically for-profit corporations, research   and educational institutions, or national governments.  Each such   full member sends representatives to meetings of the Unicode   Technical Committee (see below), as well as to a brief annual   Membership meeting.3.  The Unicode Technical Committee   The Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) is the technical decision   making body of the Consortium.  The UTC inherited the work and prior   decisions of the Unicode Working Group (UWG) that was active prior to   formation of the Consortium in January 1991.   Formally, the UTC is a technical body instituted by resolution of the   board of directors.  Each member appoints one principal and one or   two alternate representatives to the UTC.  UTC representatives   frequently do, but need not, act as the ordinary member   representatives for the purposes of the annual meeting.   The UTC is presided over by a Chair and Vice-Chair, appointed by the   Board of Directors for an unspecified term of service.   The UTC meets 4 to 5 times a year to discuss proposals, additions,   and various other technical topics.  Each meeting lasts 3 to 4 full   days.  Meetings are held in locations decided upon by the membership,   frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area.  There is no fee for   participation in UTC meetings.  Agendas for meetings are not   generally posted to any public forum, but meeting dates, locations,   and logistics are posted well in advance on the "Unicode Calendar of   Events" web page.   At the discretion of the UTC chair, meetings are open to   participation of member and liaison organizations, and to observation   by others.  The minutes of meetings are also posted publicly on the   "UTC Minutes" page of the Unicode Web site.   All UTC meetings are held jointly with the INCITS Technical Committee   L2, the body responsible for Character Code standards in the United   States.  They constitute "ad hoc" meetings of the L2 body and areMcGowan                      Informational                      [Page 2]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 2004   usually followed by a full meeting of the L2 committee.  Further   information on L2 is available on the official INCITS web page.4.  Unicode Technical Committee Procedures   The formal procedures of the UTC are publicly available in a document   entitled "UTC Procedures", available from the Consortium, and on the   Unicode web site.   Despite the invocation of Robert's Rules of Order, UTC meetings are   conducted with relative informality in view of the highly technical   nature of most discussions.  Meetings focus on items from a technical   agenda organized and published by the UTC Chair prior to the meeting.   Technical items are usually proposals in one of the following   categories:      1. Addition of new characters (whole scripts, additions to         existing scripts, or other characters)      2. Preparation and Editing of Technical Reports and Standards      3. Changes in the semantics of specific characters      4. Extensions to the encoding architecture and forms of use   Note: There may also be changes to the architecture, character   properties, or semantics.  Such changes are rare, and are always   constrained by the "Unicode Stability Policies" posted on the Unicode   web site.  Significant changes are undertaken in consultation with   liaison organizations, such as W3C and IETF, which have standards   that may be affected by such changes.  See sections5 and6 below.   Typical outputs of the UTC are:      1. The Unicode Standard, major and minor versions (including the         Unicode Character Database)      2. Unicode Technical Reports      3. Stand-alone Unicode Technical Standards      4. Formal resolutions      5. Liaison statements and instructions to the Unicode liaisons to         other organizations.McGowan                      Informational                      [Page 3]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 2004   For each technical item on the meeting agenda, the general process is   as follows:      1. Introduction by the topic sponsor      2. Proposals and discussion      3. Consensus statements or formal motions      4. Assignment of formal actions to implement decisions5.  Unicode Technical Committee Motions   Technical topics of any complexity never proceed from initial   proposal to final ratification or adoption into the standard in the   course of one UTC meeting.  The UTC members and presiding officers   are aware that technical changes to the standard have broad   consequences to other standards, implementers, and end-users of the   standard.  Input from other organizations and experts is often vital   to the understanding of various proposals and for successful adoption   into the standard.   Technical topics are decided in UTC through the use of formal   motions, either taken in meetings, or by means of thirty-day letter   ballots.  Formal UTC motions are of two types:      1. Simple motions      2. Precedents   Simple motions may pass with a simple majority constituting more than   50 percent of the qualified voting members; or by a special majority   constituting two-thirds or more of the qualified voting members.   Precedents are defined, according to the UTC Procedures as either      (A) an existing Unicode Policy, or      (B) an explicit precedent.   Precedents must be passed or overturned by a special majority.   Examples of implicit precedents include:      1. Publication of a character in the standard      2. Published normative character propertiesMcGowan                      Informational                      [Page 4]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 2004      3. Algorithms required for formal conformance   An Explicit Precedent is a policy, procedure, encoding, algorithm, or   other item that is established by a separate motion saying (in   effect) that a particular prior motion establishes a precedent.   A proposal may be passed either by a formal motion and vote, or by   consensus.  If there is broad agreement as to the proposal, and no   member wishes to force a vote, then the proposal passes by consensus   and is recorded as such in the minutes.6.  Unicode Consortium Policies   Because the Unicode Standard is continually evolving in an attempt to   reach the ideal of encoding "all the world's scripts", new characters   will constantly be added.  In this sense, the standard is unstable:   in the standard's useful lifetime, there may never be a final point   at which no more characters are added.  Realizing this, the   Consortium has adopted certain policies to promote and maintain   stability of the characters that are already encoded, as well as   laying out a Roadmap to future encodings.   The overall policies of the Consortium with regard to encoding   stability, as well as other issues such as privacy, are published on   a "Unicode Consortium Policies" web page.  Deliberations and encoding   proposals in the UTC are bound by these policies.   The general effect of the stability policies may be stated in this   way: once a character is encoded, it will not be moved or removed and   its name will not be changed.  Any of those actions has the potential   for causing obsolescence of data, and they are not permitted.  The   canonical combining class and decompositions of characters will not   be changed in any way that affects normalization.  In this sense,   normalization, such as that used for International Domain Naming and   "early normalization" for use on the World Wide Web, is fixed and   stable for every character at the time that character is encoded.   (Any changes that are undertaken because of outright errors in   properties or decompositions are dealt with by means of an adjunct   data file so that normalization stability can still be maintained by   those who need it.)   Once published, each version of the Unicode Standard is absolutely   stable and will never be changed retroactively.  Implementations or   specifications that refer to a specific version of the Unicode   Standard can rely upon this stability.  If future versions of such   implementations or specifications upgrade to a future version of the   Unicode Standard, then some changes may be necessary.McGowan                      Informational                      [Page 5]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 2004   Property values of characters, such as directionality for the Unicode   Bidi algorithm, may be changed between versions of the standard in   some circumstances.  As less-well documented characters and scripts   are encoded, the exact character properties and behavior may not be   well known at the time the characters are first encoded.  As more   experience is gathered in implementing the newly encoded characters,   adjustments in the properties may become necessary.  This re-working   is kept to a minimum.  New and old versions of the relevant property   tables are made available on the Consortium's web site.   Normative and some informative data about characters is kept in the   Unicode Character Database (UCD).  The structure of many of these   property values will not be changed.  Instead, when new properties   are defined, the Consortium adds new files for these properties, so   as not to affect the stability of existing implementations that use   the values and properties defined in the existing formats and files.   The latest version of the UCD is available on the Consortium web site   via the "Unicode Data" heading.   Note on data redistribution: Unlike the situation with IETF   documents, some parts of the Unicode Character Database may have   restrictions on their verbatim redistribution with source-code   products.  Users should read the notices in files they intend to use   in such products.  The information contained in the UCD may be freely   used to create derivative works (such as programs, compressed data   files, subroutines, data structures, etc.) that may be redistributed   freely, but some files may not be redistributable verbatim.  Such   restrictions on Unicode data files are never meant to prohibit or   control the use of the data in products, but only to help ensure that   users retrieve the latest official releases of data files when using   the data in products.7.  UTC and ISO (WG2)   The character repertoire, names, and general architecture of the   Unicode Standard are identical to the parallel international standard   ISO/IEC 10646.  ISO/IEC 10646 only contains a small fraction of the   semantics, properties and implementation guidelines supplied by the   Unicode Standard and associated technical standards and reports.   Implementations conformant to Unicode are conformant to ISO/IEC   10646.   ISO/IEC 10646 is maintained by the committee ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2.   The WG2 committee is composed of national body representatives to   ISO.  Details on the ISO organization may be found on the official   web site of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).McGowan                      Informational                      [Page 6]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 2004   Details and history of the relationship between ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2   and Unicode, Inc. may be found inAppendix C of The Unicode Standard.   (A PDF rendition of the most recent printed edition of the Unicode   Standard can be found on the Unicode web site.)   WG2 shares with UTC the policies regarding stability: WG2 neither   removes characters nor changes their names once published.  Changes   in both standards are closely tracked by the respective committees,   and a very close working relationship is fostered to maintain   synchronization between the standards.   The Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) is one of a small set of other   independent standards defined and maintained by UTC.  It is not,   properly speaking, part of the Unicode Standard itself, but is   separately defined in Unicode Technical Standard #10 (UTS #10).   There is no conformance relationship between the two standards,   except that conformance to a specific base version of the Unicode   Standard (e.g., 4.0) is specified in a particular version of a UTS.   The collation algorithm specified in UTS #10 is conformant to ISO/IEC   14651, maintained by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2, and the two organizations   maintain a close relationship.  Beyond what is specified in ISO/IEC   14651, the UCA contains additional constraints on collation,   specifies additional options, and provides many more implementation   guidelines.8.  Process of Technical Changes to the Unicode Standard   Changes to The Unicode Standard are of two types: architectural   changes, and character additions.   Most architectural changes do not affect ISO/IEC 10646, for example,   the addition of various character properties to Unicode.  Those   architectural changes that do affect both standards, such as   additional UTF formats or allocation of planes, are very carefully   coordinated by the committees.  As always, on the UTC side,   architectural changes that establish precedents are carefully   monitored and the above-described rules and procedures are followed.   Additional characters for inclusion in the The Unicode Standard must   be approved both by the UTC and by WG2.  Proposals for additional   characters enter the standards process in one of several ways:   through...      1. a national body member of WG2      2. a member company or associate of UTC      3. directly from an individual "expert" contributorMcGowan                      Informational                      [Page 7]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 2004   The two committees have jointly produced a "Proposal Summary Form"   that is required to accompany all additional character proposals.   This form may be found online at the WG2 web site, and on the Unicode   web site along with information about "Submitting New Characters or   Scripts".  Instructions for submitting proposals to UTC may likewise   be found online.   Often, submission of proposals to both committees (UTC and WG2) is   simultaneous.  Members of UTC also frequently forward to WG2   proposals that have been initially reviewed by UTC.   In general, a proposal that is submitted to UTC before being   submitted to WG2 passes through several stages:      1. Initial presentation to UTC      2. Review and re-drafting      3. Forwarding to WG2 for consideration      4. Re-drafting for technical changes      5. Balloting for approval in UTC      6. Re-forwarding and recommendation to WG2      7. At least two rounds of international balloting in ISO   About two years are required to complete this process.  Initial   proposals most often do not include sufficient information or   justification to be approved.  These are returned to the submitters   with comments on how the proposal needs to be amended or extended.   Repertoire addition proposals that are submitted to WG2 before being   submitted to UTC are generally forwarded immediately to UTC through   committee liaisons.  The crucial parts of the process (steps 5   through 7 above) are never short-circuited.  A two-thirds majority in   UTC is required for approval at step 5.   Proposals for additional scripts are required to be coordinated with   relevant user communities.  Often there are ad-hoc subcommittees of   UTC or expert mail list participants who are responsible for actually   drafting proposals, garnering community support, or representing user   communities.   The rounds of international balloting in step 7 have participation   both by UTC and WG2, though UTC does not directly vote in the ISO   process.McGowan                      Informational                      [Page 8]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 2004   Occasionally a proposal approved by one body is considered too   immature for approval by the other body, and may be blocked de-facto   by either of the two.  Only after both bodies have approved the   additional characters do they proceed to the rounds of international   balloting.  (The first round is a draft international standard during   which some changes may occur, the second round is final approval   during which only editorial changes are made.)   This process assures that proposals for additional characters are   mature and stable by the time they appear in a final international   ballot.9.  Public Access to the Character Encoding Process   While Unicode, Inc. is a membership organization, and the final say   in technical matters rests with UTC, the process is quite open to   public input and scrutiny of processes and proposals.  There are many   influential individual experts and industry groups who are not   formally members, but whose input to the process is taken seriously   by UTC.   Internally, UTC maintains a mail list called the "Unicore" list,   which carries traffic related to meetings, technical content of the   standard, and so forth.  Members of the list are UTC representatives;   employees and staff of member organizations (such as the Research   Libraries Group); individual liaisons to and from other standards   bodies (such as WG2 and IETF); and invited experts from institutions   such as the Library of Congress and some universities.  Subscription   to the list for external individuals is subject to "sponsorship" by   the corporate officers.   Unicode, Inc. also maintains a public discussion list called the   "Unicode" list.  Subscription is open to anyone, and proceedings of   the "Unicode" mail list are publicly archived.  Details are on the   Consortium web site under the "Mail Lists" heading.   Technical proposals for changes to the standard are posted to both of   these mail lists on a regular basis.  Discussion on the public list   may result in a written proposal being generated for a later UTC   meeting.  Technical issues and other standardization "events" of any   significance, such as beta releases and availability of draft   documents, are announced and then discussed in this public forum,   well before standardization is finalized.  From time to time, the UTC   also publishes on the Consortium web site "Public Review Issues" to   gather feedback and generate discussion of specific proposals whose   impact may be unclear, or for which sufficiently broad review may not   yet have been brought to the UTC deliberations.McGowan                      Informational                      [Page 9]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 2004   Anyone may make a character encoding or architectural proposal to   UTC.  Membership in the organization is not required to submit a   proposal.  To be taken seriously, the proposal must be framed in a   substantial way, and be accompanied by sufficient documentation to   warrant discussion.  Examples of proposals are easily available by   following links from the "Proposed Characters" and "Roadmaps"   headings on the Unicode web site.  Guidelines for proposals are also   available under the heading "Submitting Proposals".   In general, proposals are publicly aired on the "Unicode" mail list,   sometimes for a long period, prior to formal submission.  Generally   this is of benefit to the proposer as it tends to reduce the number   of times the proposal is sent back for clarification or with requests   for additional information.  Once a proposal reaches the stage of   being ready for discussion by UTC, the proposer will have received   contact through the public mail list with one or more UTC members   willing to explain or defend it in a UTC meeting.10.  Acknowledgements   Thanks to Mark Davis, Simon Josefsson, and Ken Whistler for their   extensive review and feedback on previous versions of this document.11.  Security Considerations   This memo describes the operational procedures of an organization;   the procedures themselves have no consequences for Internet Security.12.  Author's Address   Rick McGowan   c/o The Unicode Consortium   P.O. Box 391476   Mountain View, CA 94039-1476   U.S.A.   Phone:   +1-650-693-3921   Web:http://www.unicode.org/McGowan                      Informational                     [Page 10]

RFC 3718      Internal Workings of the Unicode Consortium  February 200413.  Full Copyright Statement   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  This document is subject   to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained inBCP 78 and   except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.   This document and the information contained herein are provided on an   "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS   OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET   ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,   INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE   INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED   WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.Intellectual Property   The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any   Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to   pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in   this document or the extent to which any license under such rights   might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has   made any independent effort to identify any such rights.  Information   on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be   found inBCP 78 andBCP 79.   Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any   assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an   attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of   such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this   specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository athttp://www.ietf.org/ipr.   The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any   copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary   rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement   this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-   ipr@ietf.org.Acknowledgement   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the   Internet Society.McGowan                      Informational                     [Page 11]