Re: Encoding Standard

On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 7:30 PM, Philippe Le Hegaret <plh@w3.org> wrote:
> This depends on the kind of fork. As always, there as pros and cons and
> the goal here is to avoid fragmentation. For encoding, I understand that
> the I18n working group has no interest in modifying the document and
> fragment the Web. Their main motivation is to have and maintain a
> snapshot of the encoding specification, for the sake of providing stable
> references. As such, the cost of forking is low. I agree that the risk
> isn't null but I believe it is a lot lower that the fragmentation cost
> around HTML for example. The main reason being that there are various
> differences between the WHATWG HTML and the W3C HTML, while I don't
> think it is the case for Encoding.

I don't think there's much in the form of a guarantee here.


> You read "not recommended" as "must not do it". We never said that. If
> we wanted to say that, we would have kept the W3C document license
> instead. "not recommended" needs to be read as "SHOULD NOT (see RFC
> 2119)", ie there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances
> when the particular behavior is acceptable or even useful. W3C has
> always granted permission to copy its specifications. The dual license
> still allows you to do so. This use is actually not harmful to
> interoperability and the cost is minimal. If you believe that this is
> not well represented or understood in the HTML FAQ, I'm happy to clarify
> it.

None of this is an argument for why you believe you can override the SHOULD NOT.


> I don't think it's fair for an individual to work within a working group
> on a specification, independently of where it originated or contributed
> from, and then ask the Group to withdraw his or her contributions
> afterwards. The document license was there at the beginning of the
> charter, didn't change recently in the i18n wg, and the Group was
> getting ready to publish it as a FPWD. It would be highly problematic if
> organizations or individuals can withdraw simply contributions at any
> time. I do realize that your position might cause some headaches in
> terms of maintaining the snapshots over time however.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. As far as groups of the W3C I'm
involved with goes, I'm only a participant of the W3C TAG.


-- 
http://annevankesteren.nl/

Received on Monday, 14 October 2013 13:32:55 UTC