Re: Need to request transition to CR this month for WebDriver

Mostly for the benefit of Mike and Philippe!

Current status is, the spec is going through a lot of bug fixes at the
moment to get the spec into shape.

Test suite is being worked on by Microsoft and Google has hired a
contractor to help get the test suite in place.

It is great to see this much effort going in!

David



On 2 January 2017 at 10:41, Michael[tm] Smith <mike@w3.org> wrote:

> We need to request transition to Candidate Recommendation this month for
> the WebDriver spec.
>
> Our plan of record requires we start CR this month in order to reach
> Recommendation with the spec before our charter expires at the end of
> March:
>
>   https://www.w3.org/2016/05/browser-testing-tools-charter.html
>
> I have committed to Philippe to set aside enough of my time now and over
> the
> following two months to deal with the W3C process steps needed to get us
> to CR
> with the spec, and to get us out of CR and finally to Recommendation.
>
> I think with Philippe’s support I could also get us one last extremely
> short
> charter extension if needed in the case that we time out before we’re able
> to
> actually get the Recommendation published.
>
> The process steps require a couple of mandatory periods of several weeks
> each,
> so it’s possible (maybe probable) that we will not be able to get through
> all of them in enough time even if we do transition to CR this month.
>
> So if we do end up needing it, I think I could get us some very short
> additional
> time as an extension to our charter—a few additional weeks at most, not
> months.
>
> But I also need to note here that after we do get this work completed, I
> do not
> anticipate we can demonstrate there’s enough momentum to recharter the
> group for
> future work—not enough for me to convince W3C management and the W3C
> Advisory
> Committee it justifies the costs of (re)chartering a formal W3C Working
> Group.
>
> So for April and beyond we need to also plan to have by then transitioned
> the
> effort-going-forward to a W3C Community Group—where future work on
> WebDriver can
> be incubated—and then later, when we eventually have enough it’s clear
> there’s a
> need for getting that new (or newly matured and actually implemented) stuff
> fully standardized, then at that point we could spin up a Working Group
> again.
>
> So I can also help with getting that Community Group spun up in the next
> months.
>
> But for now the gist of it is that if we care about getting WebDriver to
> Recommendation, then we need to make as productive use of our time over
> the next
> 12 weeks as we’re able to—to focus on completing the current work of the
> Working
> Group, and tie and ribbon on the spec and declare victory as far as having
> navigated the current spec through the W3C process successfully.
>
>   —Mike
>
> --
> Michael[tm] Smith https://people.w3.org/mike
>