Re: minutes: HTML WG Weekly 21 May 2009 [draft]

On May 24, 2009, at 3:50 AM, Sam Ruby wrote:

>
> I agree that it was a lopsided vote.
>
> I agree that there was an intent to publish as a Note, but disagree  
> with any implication that it constituted a commitment or a decision  
> to ultimately publish as a Note, in particular I disagree that it  
> was a decision that would need to be reversed.
>
> I disagree that the conference call is "informal", but I agree that  
> further discussion is warranted.

Let me put it this way. I think if we want to make a decision as a WG  
not to publish any further Working Drafts, and not to aim to publish  
as a Note, I think that decision should be taken as seriously as the  
decision to publish in the first place.

I think discussion on a single conference call, where abandoning the  
Design Principles document was not even an agenda item (though other  
Design Principles discussion was), and when there had been no mailing  
list discussion of doing so, does not constitute an adequate process  
for assessing consensus.


After writing the above, I checked what the W3C Process had to say  
about stopping work on a document. I was surprised to learn that,  
apparently, the  W3C Process does not allow stopping work without  
publishing either as a Recommendation or a Working Group Note: <http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr.html#tr-end 
 >. These are the only allowed end states, and the proper way to  
abandon a document is to publish it as a Note. This means that any  
time we agree to publish a Working Draft, we are committing to at  
least publishing a WG Note at some point, though of course publishing  
as a Note does not imply any endorsement.


Regards,
Maciej

Received on Sunday, 24 May 2009 12:09:11 UTC