Chair's comment on charter renewal objection

 To the list:

I would like to comment briefly on the filing by Alan Chapell objecting to extension of the time line for the Working Group.

To begin, I did not know, prior to the Boston face-to-face, that the extension would be an object of any real controversy.  My perspective was that I was announced at the end of November to be the new co-chair. A diverse set of stakeholders were involved in my coming on board, and it made common sense to me that we would have a fair shot of working together to try to build a standard.

As you saw at Boston, the period from my announcement until the Boston F2F was a climb up a steep learning curve, including stakeholdermeetings with many of you.

Since Boston, we are working each week on text and specific action items.  I have contemplated narrowing the range of outstanding issues to get us to a good place ­ a realistic goal at the next face-to-face of having good text on each of the issues.  With the normal clean-up of wording, that puts us in the June/July time frame for Last Call, as contemplated in the new schedule.  The subsequent stages, as I understand it, are standard periods for receiving public comments, etc.

This June/July timeframe is the exact schedule I spoke of with many of you when I agreed to come on board on the first place.  It is this timeframe to which we are working; and it is to this timeframe that I am devoting my full efforts this spring semester when I have no teaching obligations.

Mr. Chapell's "request that further TPWG work cease" on all other issues is not the way to proceed.  The W3C will address his point separately.  We have work to do.  Let¹s do it on the timetable that we contemplated when I came aboard.

Peter



Professor Peter P. Swire
C. William O'Neill Professor of Law
    Ohio State University
240.994.4142
www.peterswire.net