--On Tuesday, July 09, 2013 19:43 -0400 Donald Eastlake
<d3e3e3(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
Hi John,
Excuse me for replying to just part of your message below:
No problem.
I found your explanation helpful. Two observations at the
risk of repeating myself....
(1) I did not make a proposal. I did point out that there were
other possibilities within the general bounds of the "no more
than two" rule. Beyond that, about as far as I'm willing to go
is to say that different mechanisms (the current ordered list,
selecting a company down to two candidates, your square root of
V alternate suggestion, and maybe some other things) each have
advantages and disadvantages and, probably, each optimizes for
something different or deals with a different marginal case. I
suspect that, most of the time, the differences in practice are
likely to be trivial (or smaller). But I haven't even tried to
do the analyses in large part because I think they would be much
too speculative.
(2) In response to Brian, you wrote...
That said, the "not more than two from the same employer" rule
was written in anticipation of a theoretical problem; it seems
I think not. If I recall correctly, there was at least one
noncom with three voting members with the same affiliation.
While there was no particular evidence that these voting
members were acting as other than individuals, the consensus
was that it just smelled bad and so the limit of two ...
The "bad smell" issue is, IMO, far more important than any
discussions of whether people or organizations have misbehaved
or might misbehave in the future. It is especially important
should we have another round of discussions about antitrust
policies because, for an SDO, the ability, even in principle,
for one organization or set of interests to dominate a body or
its leadership selection process can easily create a lawyer's
playground. I don't think it would be wise to try to completely
eliminate that risk even if it were possible, but passing a
smell test is nonetheless important for multiple reasons.
best,
john