Re: Draft Charter

Ian,

Can you expand on why Google feels so strongly that it should be a  
part of the Web Apps working group? I think its been stated a number  
of times why people feel it belongs in a separate group. IP alone is  
enough of a stumbling block and a lot of progress has already been  
made in getting the charter proposed and off to a good start.

I also agree on the specific call-out of privacy in the opening  
paragraph. It's something that seems out of scope of the specification  
and more aptly implemented by each vendor.

rs

On Jun 20, 2008, at 3:37 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:

>
> On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Matt Womer wrote:
>>
>> I'm happy to say that a draft of the Geolocation charter is now
>> available [1], [...] Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated,  
>> either
>> here on this list or to myself directly.
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/2008/06/geolocation/charter/
>
> Here's Google's feedback:
>
> We don't think this should have a separate working group. We would  
> rather
> see this done in the Web Apps working group. We feel quite strongly  
> that
> this API should not have its own group.
>
> If, and I stress "if", the W3C decides to go ahead and have a separate
> working group despite this, then we have the following comments on the
> proposed charter:
>
> - We think the first paragraph's emphasis on prviacy could mislead  
> people
>   into thinking that the API should constrain how user agents expose  
> the
>   privacy options to the user. We would like the charter to explicitly
>   allow the deliverables to defer the user interface aspects of  
> privacy,
>   and the privacy model in general, to the user agents, within the
>   constraints required to obtain interoperability at the API level.
>
> - We think that the charter should not require the working group to
>   publish the requirements as an explicit WG note. It should be
>   acceptable for us to publish the requirements in the spec itself  
> as an
>   appendix, or on a wiki, or on our WG home page, etc.
>
> - We believe the timetable to have an unrealistic estimate for the  
> time
>   from CR to PR. Given the need to create a comprehensive test suite  
> and
>   to obtain two complete implementations, we believe it would be more
>   realistic to expect the API specification to reach PR at the  
> earliest
>   one year after it enters CR, rather than three months later as in  
> the
>   current proposed charter. (This also affects the proposed end date.)
>
> - We do not like that the group is expected to have face to face  
> meetings
>   and telecons. Our experience with other working groups in the past  
> few
>   years suggests that the group should not be required to meet, and  
> that
>   asynchronous communication media such as IRC and e-mail should be
>   sufficient.
>
> - We are not sure that the charter should explicitly expect the  
> group to
>   follow the AWWW and CharMod specifications. Recent developments (in
>   particular in the HTML5 group) have suggested that these  
> specifications
>   are somewhat unrealistic in terms of the constraints put on
>   technologies intended for wide deployment on the Web.
>
> - We do not believe there should be a member-only mailing list. A  
> public
>   group should be exclusively public.
>
> - We believe that the decision policy should be ammended to explicitly
>   grant specification editors broad responsibility for the  
> specifications
>   that they edit, requiring them to address the needs of anyone  
> bringing
>   feedback to the group, as well as requiring them to base their
>   decisions on technical merit and research rather than on votes; we
>   think that that decisions should explicitly not be derived from
>   consensus. We think that the decision policy should say that the  
> group
>   has the right to replace the editor based on a vote, so as to
>   safeguard against editors who fail in their responsibilities to the
>   group.
>
> - We think that participation should be open to anyone on the same  
> basis
>   as the HTML working group.
>
> Cheers,
> -- 
> Ian Hickson, on behalf of Google
>
>

Received on Saturday, 21 June 2008 03:04:37 UTC