The project team owns the proposal document

[waynebeaton]

The individual who creates a new project proposal for a specification project and the listed project leads are the ones who decided what (if any) changes are made to a proposal after it is posted for community review. Strictly speaking, committers also have a say, but unless a committer is also listed as a project lead, they do not have the necessary permissions to edit a proposal. In the event that a PMC or working group committee wants changes, they should work with the project team and the the project team should be the ones to actually effect the changes.

TL;DR: a proposal cannot be changed without involving the project team in the decision.

The EMO does periodically edit proposals prior to posting for community review, but only in collaboration with the project team.

Note that, once a creation review (and corresponding ballot of the specification committee) starts, the proposal document is "locked down" and if a change is required, the review must be stopped and invalidated; the review can be re-initiated any time thereafter.

For completeness, the steering and specification committees (and others) do have a stake in specification projects and do have certain leverage. The project creation process can only proceed when:

• In the event that a specification project proposal uses a patent license that differs from the working group's default, the steering committee has voted to approve the exceptional patent license by simple majority;
• The specification committee has voted by super-majority ballot to accept the project;
• The EMO(ED) approves of the creation.

[edbratt]

We might want to clarify (here or somewhere else), the patent license must be chosen, for the purposes of the creation ballot -- prior to the beginning of that ballot (i.e. if an exception is sought, it must be approved prior to starting the steering committee ballot).

[waynebeaton]

We might want to clarify (here or somewhere else), the patent license must be chosen, for the purposes of the creation ballot -- prior to the beginning of that ballot (i.e. if an exception is sought, it must be approved prior to starting the steering committee ballot).

The current draft includes the following passage.

At the time of creation, a proposal to create a new Specification Project or convert an existing Project into a Specification Project must explicitly state its choice of Patent License.

Which, I think, gets us part-way there. We need to make it clear that the Steering Committee approval of an exceptional patent license (i.e., a patent license selection that differs from the working group's default) is required before the ballot of the Specification Committee is initiated.