Re: W3C Director's Blog on EME

On 3/9/2017 9:13 AM, Cory Doctorow wrote:
> Thanks, Philippe, but that doesn't really answer the question.
>
> There's a poll pending on the publication of EME. There is significant
> controversy over this -- and it's mounting. There is an absolute
> certainty that the poll will not have anything like consensus, meaning
> that Tim will have the final say.

Correct.

> Tim just published an op-ed that appears to prefigure the outcome of
> that poll, which has not taken place (and which is long overdue at this
> point).
>
> What should the members make of this situation? Is Tim still willing to
> listen to his members, or should we assume that regardless of the poll's
> outcome, he's already made up his mind? Because it's very hard to read
> it otherwise.

He is still willing to listen to his members at this time. I do not 
believe that we have the full picture of the state of the membership. As 
you pointed out, we will not have consensus. Again, I do not believe 
anyone would want the Director to stop engaging in the dialog.

> I'm disappointed that it took 11 days to come up with this very cursory
> statement from the W3C.

Sorry, but there are several pending questions around the EME 
specification and we're trying to go through them. I'm sure that several 
of our Members are eager to us to move the specification forward, ie 
start the poll. We published the security disclosure best practices last 
week and we're checking some facts around state of implementations this 
week.

> Also, can you clarify the confidential status of poll outcomes? I know
> that some of the 23 members who opposed charter renewal waived their
> right to confidentiality to me, and I published a list of those members,
> but some did not, and I was careful not to disclose totals because I had
> been previously warned that even oblique mentions of poll outcomes were
> covered by member confidentiality and could not be mentioned on public
> lists like this one (in that case, I merely disclosed an approximate
> *proportion* of votes in the poll, and was censured for breaching
> confidentiality).
>
> Are poll numbers disclosable now?

The state hasn't changed. I chose to disclose the numbers of objections 
to make it clear of the importance of the Director to engage in the 
dialog. As you pointed out, that number probably changed in the recent 
months anyway.

Philippe

Received on Thursday, 9 March 2017 14:45:08 UTC