Re: Draft Charter

On Jun 20, 2008, at 8:03 PM, Ryan Sarver wrote:

>
> 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 don't know of any statement as to why this belongs in a separate  
group. Can you point me to the multiple previous statements you mention?

I have heard unofficially that someone made a private complaint to the  
W3C team about geolocation being covered in the Web Apps WG charter,  
and for this reason it was removed from the charter and a new group  
was created. If there are any good reasons that justify this decision  
made without any visibility or accountability, then by all means let  
them be stated.

Until then, I agree with Ian that this work would better be done  
inside the Web Apps WG.

Regards,
Maciej

>
>
> 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 11:54:56 UTC