Re: Slides: 2014 Update - Community and Business Groups

On 2014-06-06 06:57, Coralie Mercier wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Jun 2014 14:20:27 +0200, Arthur Barstow 
> <art.barstow@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 6/5/14 6:53 PM, Coralie Mercier wrote:
>>>> I prepared a slide-set "2014 Update: Community and Business Groups" 
>>>> for the AC meeting in case people had questions. They are public.
>>>>    http://www.w3.org/2014/Talks/cm-0608-cg2wg/
>>>
>>> * slide "W3C leveraging Community Groups": w3-process CG bullet text 
>>> corrected
>>> * slide "Recent Transitions": added transition of final report of 
>>> SVG Glyphs in OpenType CG
>>> * slide "Transitions - longer-term": added Web Payments CG to call 
>>> out role in March 2014 Web Payments Workshop
>>
>> Some additional feedback:
>>
>> * #4 - Re Member participants, where you have "X participants" is 
>> that the total number of participants (including dups such as person 
>> Y is in 5 CGs) or do you mean "unique" participants. (Not looking to 
>> create extra work for you but having both pieces of data would be 
>> interesting.)
>
> Unique participants.
>
>> * #5 - for the "non-Member orgs" row, is that indeed unique 
>> "organizations" [for some definition of "org"] or are you talking 
>> about unique individuals. (I'm wondering how you categorized a bunch 
>> of people that might have @gmail.com addresses.)
>
> These are indeed unique organisations.
>
> When people request an account they declare whether they're employed 
> by a W3C Member organisation (drop-down menu), by a non-Member one, or 
> that they have no affiliation. People using a @gmail.com address may 
> fall in all three categories.
>
> This is described further in this FAQ entry:
>   http://www.w3.org/community/about/faq/#how-do-i-join-a-group
>
>> * #12 - I think the gist of the first bullet is more like "Signing 
>> the Contributor Agreement for groups that are explicitly NOT working 
>> on specifications is cumbersome". [BTW, I understand this concern and 
>> would hope KISS and common sense solutions would prevail (f.ex. the 
>> CG's charter effectively says "NO specs will be created") and we 
>> don't go down the path of creating different subclasses of CGs.]
>>
>> * #12 and #13 - both of these touch on a shortage of information 
>> (f.ex. guidelines, BPs and such) about both how CGs transition to WGs 
>> and how to evaluate new WG proposals. I think these types of issues 
>> are important to address and perhaps a first step is to document the 
>> issue(s). I just created a new "Business and Community Group 
>> Processes" product 
>> <https://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/products/16>. How about 
>> we use that?
>
> That would make me join that w3process CG, and get the full benefit of 
> its lengthy conversations :)
> That decision isn't mine; I don't feel strongly.
>
> However, the Community Council has been documenting and tracking CG 
> related things in their wiki:
>   https://www.w3.org/community/council/wiki/Main_Page
>
>> * #14 - I continue to think it was a mistake to call CG documents 
>> "specifications". Do we collectively feel the `ship has sailed` on 
>> this? If not, IMHO, changing the name to "reports" would be a better 
>> match and eliminate the confusion with WG specifications.
>
> Deliverables of CGs are called "Reports". However we refer to them as 
> specifications when they are.
> So it's difficult to avoid using the term. A question we ask for 
> certain proposed groups is whether they're going to work on a 
> specification. When I conduct the surveys, I ask the chairs whether 
> their group works on specs or are discussion groups.


The W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA) has patent 
licensing obligations for "Specifications".  The term is also used to 
refer to those in the Community process doc.  That indicates which 
Reports the patent section of the CLA applies to.  So, there needs to be 
some term to indicate which CG reports the patent licensing obligations 
apply to.

I think it would be good to formally define at CG creation whether the 
CG can produce specs or not.  Those that don't produce specs could have 
a simpler CLA that didn't involve patents (like using CC By).   That 
would be like W3C IGs vs. WGs.  There can make a difference for what 
kind of approval internal approval process companies need to go through 
for joining.



>
> In slide #15, item "Review language used in CG Reports, styles" is 
> designed to contribute to address this.
>
>> Lastly, I agree with others about the need to close non-active CGs as 
>> well as the need to provide a bit more general status of CGs (like 
>> what David proposed).
>
> Point taken.
> We're going to close a few (7 or so) after the AC meeting.
> I'm open to applying strictly 
> <http://www.w3.org/community/about/agreements/#grounds> and pruning.
>
> Thanks, Art.
>
> Coralie
>
>> -Thanks, AB
>
>
>

Received on Friday, 6 June 2014 21:21:40 UTC