RE: 72 hour call for consensus ­ election of new PBG Steering Committee slate

I think Daniel raises excellent points, and it is worth our time to revise our charter.

Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Glazman [mailto:daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com] 
Sent: Saturday, February 3, 2018 3:10 AM
To: Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com>
Cc: AUDRAIN LUC <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>; public-publishingbg@w3.org; W3C Team Digital Publishing <team-dig-publishing@w3.org>; McCloy-Kelley, Liisa <lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com>; Rick Johnson <rick.johnson@ingramcontent.com>; Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>; Bill McCoy <bmccoy@w3.org>
Subject: Re: 72 hour call for consensus  election of new PBG Steering Committee slate

Le 02/02/2018 à 19:10, Dave Cramer a écrit :

> +1 to the candidates.

Yes. I was not commenting on the candidates themselves, who all have full legitimacy for the role (although they are not the only ones).

I am much, much more circumspect about the need to have a SC at all. I was already quite concerned about it before, but I am now thinking the existence of the SC is a critical issue. In particular, the W3C CG and BG Process explicitly reads:

  - (Groups) must be fair and must not unreasonably favor or
    discriminate against any group participant or their employer.
  - (Groups) must not conflict with (..) this Community and Business
    Group Process

In W3C space, "must" and "must not" are strong words.
A Steering Committee, allowed to take any action on behalf of the BG,
*is* favoring some participants over the other ones. It is then a violation of the Process and this is forbidden, period. A deep clarification through a Charter amendment is absolutely needed.

> But we really should change the charter(s) if we're going to change 
> how we organize the work.

The fact the BG violates so blatantly its own Charter or its Process on multiple counts, even out of good will, is a strong concern to me. I will carefully review the implications of a positive decision if that happens without Charter amendment; I'm not excluding an official response based on W3C Process and W3C Business Groups Process.

To be even clearer, experiments and pragmatism are *always* good. I spent the 7.5 years of my CSS WG chairmanship calling for more pragmatism. But the BG gave itself an operating process. It kept it despite of some negative feedback on the Charter before the group started operating, feedback that was *exactly* in the scope of the current discussion. I appreciate the fact there is now a consensus to change it; but do it by the rules (ie. amending the Charter) or don't do it.

I am also urging this Group to start caring more about its W3C context.
It just cannot continue making decisions as if there were no Process or Charter *governing* them. Thank you.

</Daniel>

Received on Monday, 5 February 2018 13:32:26 UTC