Re: Web Real-Time Communications Working Group Charter Extended

> The group is nearly ready to submit a new charter [2] for review to the  Advisory Committee.
 
Microsoft really wants this WG to get WebRTC 1.0 to Recommendation during the next charter period, so we request that the Team take extra care to ensure that the WG is behind a solid plan to do so before submitting a new charter to the AC.  After a cross-company review, we have submitted several issues (#42 to #45) to https://github.com/w3c/webrtc-charter/issues suggesting charter changes and considerations we think will help get 1.0 to Recommendation in a timely manner.
 
WebRTC’s success as a popular technology has come from code-first experiments with and forks of open source implementations of the protocols and APIs, not from traditional spec-first collaboration on draft standards.  To some extent, it's success comes at the expense of standardization and interoperability.  A W3C Recommendation that defines the features of WebRTC that are needed to support key cross-implementation scenarios and that really interoperate would be quite valuable, and this is an achievable goal in the next charter period.  But achieving it will require investment and focus, and strong leadership from the Team to make happen.

Some of the specific challenges that W3C Team and the membership could help address include:
- Testing.  The test results matrix at https://wpt.fyi/webrtc is very "red", but as I understand it, the real-world interoperability picture is not quite so grim.  As with the spec itself, part of the problem is the complexity of the technology stack and the scarcity of the cross-platform expertise needed to build testing tools, infrastructure, and actual tests.  While it's tempting for the people with this expertise to work on next-generation technology, getting WebRTC 1.0 to be a credible Recommendation requires a lot of hard, somewhat unrewarding testing effort.  
- Triage.  As we argue in https://github.com/w3c/webrtc-charter/issues/45, it's time for a hard look at which features of WebRTC 1.0 may not be implemented by two or even one browser anytime soon, and hard choices are needed.  
- Future.  If there is to be a WebRTC 2.0 from W3C, we need to learn from the 1.0 experience.  " We'll need to discover new modes of collaboration across IETF and W3C (and there are some WHATWG dependencies as well), between standards bodies and open source projects, and among competitors in a very dynamic industry for WebRTC 2.0 to succeed at W3C.    

This is not a criticism of the team; Dominique Hazaël-Massieux in particular has done a great job helping the WebRTC WG wrestle with the various challenges and get the work to CR, and keeping the community together for a new charter.  I'm just saying that the WebRTC technology stack is the most complex that W3C has ever tried to standardize, and we need to work even harder and even smarter to finish 1.0 and (hopefully soon) get 2.0 off to a strong start.  



-----Original Message-----
From: Xueyuan <xueyuan@w3.org>
Date: Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at 9:59 AM
To: "w3c-ac-forum@w3.org" <w3c-ac-forum@w3.org>
Cc: "chairs@w3.org" <chairs@w3.org>
Subject: Web Real-Time Communications Working Group Charter Extended
Resent-From: W3C Members <w3c-ac-members@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at 9:46 AM

    
    Dear Advisory Committee Representative,
    Chairs,
    
    The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group (WebRTC WG) Charter [1] 
    is hereby extended until 31 May 2018.
    
    The group is nearly ready to submit a new charter [2] for review to the 
    Advisory Committee. This two months extension will let the group 
    continue its work while that review proceeds.
    
    Information on how to participate in this group is available [3]. The 
    group is currently chaired by Bernard Aboba (Microsoft), Harald 
    Alvestrand (Google) and Stefan Håkansson (Ericsson). More information 
    about the WebRTC WG is available on the group home page [4].
    
    If you should have any questions or need further information, please 
    contact Dominique Hazael-Massieux <dom@w3.org> and Vivien Lacourba 
    <vivien@w3.org>, the Working Group Staff Contacts.
    
    This extension follows section 5.2.5 of the W3C Process Document:
        https://www.w3.org/2018/Process-20180201/#charter-extension

    
    Thank you,
    
    For Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director,
    Philippe Le Hégaret, Project Management Lead,
    Dominique Hazael-Massieux and Vivien Lacourba, WebRTC WG Staff Contacts;
    Xueyuan Jia, W3C Marketing & Communications
    
    [1] https://www.w3.org/2015/07/webrtc-charter.html

    [2] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2018JanMar/0027.html

    [3] https://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/47318/join

    [4] https://www.w3.org/2011/04/webrtc/

Received on Monday, 2 April 2018 00:02:46 UTC