Re: Dissatisfaction with HTML WG

Dean Edridge wrote:
> Yes you may look at it that way if your boss is one of the eight exclusive 
> members of the WHATWG [...]

WHATWG participation was open to all from the start, AFAICT:

<http://www.whatwg.org/mailing-list>

There's a bunch of other ways to participate:

<http://www.whatwg.org/>

Who are these "eight exclusive members"? In what way are they exclusive?

Dean Edridge wrote:
> Charles McCathieNathie wrote:
>> Dean Edridge wrote:
>>> The HTMLWG [...] has become a dictatorship driven by three companies: 
>>> Google, Apple and Opera. [...] Unless one happens to be an employee (or 
>>> a friend of an employee) of these companies, one doesn't seem to have 
>>> much say in the way that HTML5 and XHTML5 gets developed.
>>
>> That strikes me as rubbish. Ben Millard, Lara Carlson and others have 
>> made contributions that have been very valuable, despite not being 
>> friends of the editors nor even of their respective employers.
>
> Those people are in the group that I mentioned.

Sorry, which group do you think I'm in?

Gregory Rosmaita, Joshue O'Conner, Steven Faulkner and *many* other people 
have made valuable contributions to HTML5 during it's development at W3C. 
Mainly with regards to accessibility issues. The spec hasn't folded this in 
yet because the research and development is ongoing.

Also, we don't have replacement spec text drafted. There are bits and pieces 
scattered throughout public-html but it takes volunteers to do actual work 
putting it together coherently and accurately. You (and anyone else who will 
spare the time) can help this happen faster.

Summarising test results, proposals, pros and cons on the wiki is one way. 
Specifically:

* <http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ComplexTables>
* <http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueTableHeaders>
* <http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE>
* <http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/TableAccessibility>

An index page is here:

<http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/>

There's an Issue Tracker to help show who is working on what and what 
progress they are making:

<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/>

If you want to help, get stuck in.

Dean Edridge wrote:
> Yes, and Ian and Dave are two of the eight members of the WHATWG. Which 
> means that the spec is being edited by the WHATWG. And this isn't about me 
> not liking the WHATWG, they are welcome to participate, I just don't want 
> them running the group.

The group co-Chairs are Dan Connolly of W3C and Chris Wilson of Microsoft. 
The W3C Director is Tim Berners-Lee of W3C. None of these participate at 
WHATWG, AFAIK.

Unease seems common around any standards organisation, government or large 
business. It is neither limited to W3C nor to WHATWG nor to leading web 
technology companies. I felt the same [unease] as many others have 
expressed, initially.

Having contributed work and received constructive feedback from other 
participants, including WHATWG participants, I'm much more at ease about how 
things are done. But an occassional decision will still seem odd to me, I 
must admit.

If we can understand these phenomena better, maybe we can resolve it 
together? Maybe it just takes time and open-mindedness to appreciate why 
unfamiliar communities do things they way they do?

[unease] <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Dec/0253.html>

--
Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
Collections of Interesting Data Tables
<http://sitesurgeon.co.uk/tables/>

Received on Friday, 11 January 2008 14:46:50 UTC