Re: clarification on Adobe Blocking

Shelley Powers wrote:
> At least two members of this team, Ian Hickson[1] and Anne van 
> Kesteren[2], representing Google and Opera, respectively, have been 
> writing this morning that Adobe is officially blocking publication of 
> HTML5. This type of communication could cause FUD among the community of 
> users, and should be addressed as soon as possible.
> 
> There was something in the minutes yesterday about a formal objection 
> from Larry Masinter [3], but the emails in this regard went to a 
> protected email list. However, Larry has discussed in the www-archive 
> list[4], a publicly accessible list, his objections to the publication 
> of Microdata, the RDFa document, and the Canvas 2D API, but not the 
> HTML5 document, itself. And the concerns I've read in this list have to 
> do with charter and scope -- a reasonable concern, I feel. Others of us 
> have also expressed a similar concern. 
> 
> An unfortunate consequence of lumping multiple documents into one CfC is 
> that there is some confusion about when an action or objection is made 
> against one, it seems to be against all. Yet, and co-chairs, correct me 
> if I'm wrong, but we can object to any one of the documents, and it 
> won't hold up up the publications of the others. The lump CfC was a 
> procedural short cut, not an actual formal grouping. 
> 
> As far as we know of, there is no Formal Objection blocking the 
> publication of HTML5...correct?
> ...

Correct.

As far as I can tell (not having access to the member archives), there 
are objections (formal or not) about publishing some of the split-out 
material as FPWD, and potentially the update to RDFa (not sure about 
that). Some of the reasons have been discussed over and over again in 
the last weeks, so I'm not sure why people appear to be surprised.

Unless I'm missing something, this does not affect the W3C specification 
called HTML5. Anyone who claims so is spreading misinformation on purpose.

On the other hand Maciej said:

"[11:00] <mjs> however the Chairs are unlikely to seek publication of 
only half of the proposed documents"

(<http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/html-wg/20100212#l-48>)

in which case these objections would indeed block publication of HTML5 
as well -- but it would be very unfair to blame Adobe in that case.

Best regards, Julian

Received on Friday, 12 February 2010 21:52:20 UTC