- From: David Singer <singer@apple.com>
- Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:29:35 -0700
- To: Revising W3C Process Community Group <public-w3process@w3.org>
I actually have a hard time seeing how this debate is about W3C process and modernizing it, but OK, we seem to be on this mailing list. On Aug 29, 2014, at 13:00 , Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote: > Jeff wrote: >> >> You will not see the W3C attacking or disrespecting the WHATWG in any way. > > Here are some examples of the W3C disrespecting the WHATWG: > > http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/ It has a huge acknowledgements section and an explicit thank you to all the contributors from WhatWG. No disrespect there that I see. > http://www.w3.org/TR/dom/ The editors who work on the WhatWG version are explicitly mentioned as such in the header. > http://w3ctag.github.io/url/ Likewise. > Please respect our request that you stop copying our work. Like you respected the W3C’s ownership of the term ‘HTML’, even if it wasn’t formally trademarked? Also, it is at least a little odd a) to promote the principle that work should be copyable, and that open licenses that encourage forking are good, and then complain when it happens b) for a community group of the W3C refer to the W3C as if it were some foreign body c) to insist that the W3C publish under a copyable license so you can copy that work, and then complain when copying happens the other way. Is it really intended that this be a one-way street? Is that respectful? > (Even if you ignore the disrespect from copying our work, there's more > subtle disrespect shown in the pages above. For example, I wrote 99%+ > of the HTML spec, yet my name appears last in a list of seven names, > with no indication of who did the work. The WHATWG logo appears > nowhere. The second one above, the copied DOM spec, references the > copied HTML spec, and doesn't even list my name at all. I'm not > looking for credit — my name doesn't even appear in the first 500 or > so pages of the HTML spec at the WHATWG — but it's a clear indication > of the respect the W3C shows the WHATWG.) If you have not asked for it, or used your name prominently in your own work (e.g. your name not appearing in the first 500 pages as you say), I am not sure it’s true. Have you asked and been refused? In what way would you like the acknowledgements changed? It’s nice to see the contributors of the WhatWG URL spec being recognized as awesome, and before the authors of the preceding specs are merely thanked, but is that respectful? Overall, the ‘them and us’, ‘we are angels and they are devils’ tone of this debate is not helpful. I rather suspect that far from resisting further publication, we should be looking for it; not only pursuing the Rec track, but looking at ISO PAS submission, so that the work can be seen not only as technically authoritative, but formally authoritative (more so than an RFC, for example). Is there any reason we cannot work together to produce a CG Report from the WhatWG CG, a Recommendation from a W3C WG, and an ISO standard which are technically identical but have been subject to expanding circles of scrutiny and approval? David Singer Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.
Received on Friday, 29 August 2014 22:30:05 UTC