Re: Differences between the W3C and WHATWG specifications

On Sunday 2010-06-20 01:11 +0100, Doug Schepers wrote:
> So, the aim of the charter to "actively pursue convergence with WHATWG, 
> encouraging open participation" has clearly been met from the W3C HTML 
> WG side.  Speaking for myself (not my employer), I would like to see a 
> clear message from WHATWG that it intends to act with similar good faith 
> to present a straightforward collaboration with W3C so that the users, 
> content authors, implementors, and specifiers know what constitutes the 
> HTML5 spec.

While I think it's true that the HTML Working Group within the W3C
has tried to collaborate with WHATWG, I'm not so sure that it's true
of the W3C as a whole.

Currently the W3C and the WHATWG have very different document
licensing policies.  The WHATWG document license allows anybody to
create a derivative specification; the W3C's does not.  While the
HTML working group requested a change to the license:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0388.html ,
the W3C has not yet made such a change.  I think many members of the
WHATWG community feel strongly about this issue; I certainly do.

The current licensing situation means that the only practical way
the WHATWG and W3C can work together on the same specification is if
all of the text originates on the WHATWG side.  That seems like an
odd definition of collaboration, and I think it's closely tied to a
number of the other issues causing conflict in this group.

-David

-- 
L. David Baron                                 http://dbaron.org/
Mozilla Corporation                       http://www.mozilla.com/

Received on Monday, 21 June 2010 23:41:02 UTC