Re: CfC: to add Speech API to Charter; deadline January 19

Hi All - a couple of my comments on this proposal ...

First, in case folks are not familiar with the W3C's process to formally 
adding a new deliverable to a WG's charter, here are the general steps: 
1) a proposal for new work is made; 2) determine if there is WG 
consensus on the proposed scope increase; 3) W3C staff proposes new 
scope/deliverable to the Advisory Committee (this is a "formal" charter 
review with Member-only confidentiality) ; 4) Director makes a decision. 
I mention this because even if there is consensus within the WG to add a 
deliverable, comments submitted during step 3 can affect the Director's 
decision.

If WebApps takes on this work, my expectation is that the work will 
proceed in an asynchronous manner as is consistent with all of WebApps' 
other current work (see [WorkMode]). If the proponents would like a 
couple of calls to help bootstrap the work, I would be willing to help 
with that but I cannot commit to regular ongoing calls.

Since the members of the XG have different views on the specific 
features WebApps should take, it raises concerns from me about this 
effort being a bit unbounded. Although there can be some potential IP 
commitment benefits if WebApps takes this work, it seems like this could 
effectively become a WG within a WG and I think that is antagonistic to 
the spirit of W3C and doing so could provide an IP barrier for Members 
that only want to commit to the Speech scope and not all of WebApps' 
other scope (this is already a problem for some Members). As such, I 
think the proponents of this proposal should provide clear arguments why 
a new WG (effectively a continuation of the XG with a new name) is not a 
better choice.

-AB

On 1/12/12 7:31 AM, ext Arthur Barstow wrote:
> Glen Shires and some others at Google proposed [1] that WebApps add 
> Speech API to WebApps' charter and they put forward the Speech 
> Javascript API Specification [2] as as a starting point. Members of 
> Mozilla and Nuance have voiced various levels of support for this 
> proposal. As such, this is a Call for Consensus to add Speech API to 
> WebApps' charter.
>
> Positive response to this CfC is preferred and encouraged and silence 
> will be considered as agreeing with the proposal. The deadline for 
> comments is January 19 and all comments should be sent to 
> public-webapps at w3.org.
>
> -AB
>
> [1] 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2011OctDec/1696.html
> [2] 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2011OctDec/att-1696/speechapi.html
>

Received on Thursday, 19 January 2012 14:45:38 UTC