Re: Thoughts on rechartering and the future of publications on the web

>> The CG gives a better environment to follow standards even if people are not participating in it.

> Sure, that’s why I mentioned that the CG shouldn’t be shut down even if a WG takes over the actual development of the specification. It’s no different in my mind than having the WAI interest group as a complement to the ARIA and AG working groups. There are also plenty of tasks that can be delegated to a CG to work on, such as best practices, to free up WG time.

If I read carefully the Process document [1], no mention of CG’s or BG’s are to be found for the progress of specifications.

Interest Groups and Working Groups are the full fledge contributors to standards and need full W3C membership to be in.

Beyond these 2 kinds of group, “general public” is asked for consensus:
Consensus is a core value of W3C. To promote consensus, the W3C process requires Chairs to ensure that groups consider all legitimate views and objections, and endeavor to resolve them, whether these views and objections are expressed by the active participants of the group or by others (e.g., another W3C group, a group in another organization, or the general public).

Obviously, “general public” can start to review specifications at “First Public Working Draft” and particularly at “wide review” stage.
The requirements for wide review are not precisely defined by the W3C Process. The objective is to ensure that the entire set of stakeholders of the Web community, including the general public, have had adequate notice of the progress of the Working Group (for example through notices posted to public-review-announce@w3.org<mailto:public-review-announce@w3.org>) and were able to actually perform reviews of and provide comments on the specification.

Then comments and objections are taken very seriously:
Reviewers should send substantive technical reviews as early as possible. Working Groups are often reluctant to make substantive changes<https://www.w3.org/2018/Process-20180201/#substantive-change> to a mature document, particularly if this would cause significant compatibility problems due to existing implementation. Working Groups should record substantive or interesting proposals raised by reviews but not incorporated into a current specification.

But there may be no “substantives changes”.

Luc

[1] https://www.w3.org/2018/Process-20180201/


De : Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com>
Date : jeudi 22 novembre 2018 à 07:05
À : Avneesh Singh <avneesh.sg@gmail.com>, AUDRAIN LUC <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>, 'W3C Publishing Business Group' <public-publishingbg@w3.org>, 'Jeff Jaffe' <jeff@w3.org>
Objet : RE: Thoughts on rechartering and the future of publications on the web

> The CG gives a better environment to follow standards even if people are not participating in it.

Sure, that’s why I mentioned that the CG shouldn’t be shut down even if a WG takes over the actual development of the specification. It’s no different in my mind than having the WAI interest group as a complement to the ARIA and AG working groups. There are also plenty of tasks that can be delegated to a CG to work on, such as best practices, to free up WG time.

Matt

From: Avneesh Singh <avneesh.sg@gmail.com>
Sent: November 21, 2018 08:47
To: Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com>; 'AUDRAIN LUC' <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>; 'W3C Publishing Business Group' <public-publishingbg@w3.org>; 'Jeff Jaffe' <jeff@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on rechartering and the future of publications on the web

“But of the 300 or so IDPF members, probably no more than 10% were ever active in the development of EPUB at any given time”

My statement was about 300 members participating or following EPUB standards development.
It is not just about development. Only a limited number of people are engaged in actual development of standards, it is also true for other standards bodies.
The CG gives a better environment to follow standards even if people are not participating in it.

We should look the issue from two perspectives.
1. Is rec track label helpful, does it justify the efforts. The work is in progress for that.
2. How to engage more publishing community. Obviously working group limits participation. How can we make sure that publishing industry as a whole is better involved.

With regards
Avneesh


From: Matt Garrish
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2018 18:00
To: 'Avneesh Singh' ; 'AUDRAIN LUC' ; 'W3C Publishing Business Group' ; 'Jeff Jaffe'
Subject: RE: Thoughts on rechartering and the future of publications on the web

> W3C may have achieved number of 50 or little more, but it is still 15% to 20%. And with transitional membership program coming to close, it may drop to some extent.

But of the 300 or so IDPF members, probably no more than 10% were ever active in the development of EPUB at any given time, and I’m not sure moving to W3C has changed the composition of that group greatly (plus the CG and BG can still be forums for discussion). What might be more helpful than looking at raw numbers would be to query those parties and find out who has the interest and time to dedicate to the tasks that are going to be necessary to get 3.2 to REC.

By way of example, the EPUB test suite was just a basic way of showing compatibility with EPUB 2, plus highlight some new features, and that took a lot of time to put together by a lot of people (we had a dedicated subgroup in IDPF working on it at one point, consisting of a good dozen or so individuals). If we can’t get at least a similar commitment of people and time, it would shed some doubt on the potential success of moving EPUB 3 into the REC track.

Matt

From: Avneesh Singh <avneesh.sg@gmail.com<mailto:avneesh.sg@gmail.com>>
Sent: November 21, 2018 07:00
To: AUDRAIN LUC <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr<mailto:LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>>; W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>; Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org<mailto:jeff@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on rechartering and the future of publications on the web



On 11/19/2018 5:25 AM, AUDRAIN LUC wrote:
In this global view, you will not be surprised that I believe making EPUB3.2 a REC is not a good idea. It will not only take energy and time from the WG, it will also put EPUB3 out of reach of the pub industry!
We all know that W3C full members fees are unaffordable for almost all publishing houses around the world, and not only the fees, but also the time consuming, expertise, and travel expenses.

There are many Pro's and Con's about putting EPUB 3.2 on the REC track, and I don't want to take a position on this general issue.

But I want to push back on the notion that we don't have a critical mass of publishers who are members of W3C.  Quite the contrary, in a very short amount of time, I believe we have built a strong foundation.  This includes:

  *   Classical organizations in the IDPF ecosystem who joined W3C - either before the merger or after.  Some of the larger ones include: Hachette, Pearson, Wiley, VitalSource, Kodansha, Shueisha, and MacMillan.  I expect that a few more might join as we get to the TPI expiration date. And we have some smaller members as well.
  *   Classical W3C companies who participate (or should participate) in EPUB: Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Rakuten (including Kobo and Overdrive)
  *   New W3C members who we want to get involved in EPUB: Amazon
  *   We still have over two months remaining to get more TPIs to sign up to regular membership.  Thanks to various folks in the BG who have been helping Karen and Alan with making contacts.

To be sure, we are not where we need to be, and we have a lot of work in front of ourselves to further strengthen this community. But we have a very strong nucleus.
Then as a REC, EPUB will not be maintained any more by publishers !

Avneesh: In IDPF more 300 publishers and vendors use to participate or follow the EPUB developments. W3C may have achieved number of 50 or little more, but it is still 15% to 20%. And with transitional membership program coming to close, it may drop to some extent.
W3C has made good efforts to involve publishing community, but we are still not at the level of satisfaction.
I believe we need to encourage participation in EPUB 3 developments, it may be through free of cost in community group or may be at discounted price. And leverage it for encouraging the participating organizations to up grade to official W3C membership in due course.


With regards
Avneesh

membership coming to end