Re: Web Payments WG - how to join?

Hey Jehan (and everyone else),

+Ian Jacobs from W3C

The W3C is a consortium that is formed of paying members (who's fees fund
its existence).
Members make very strong commitments when joining and when joining working
groups around IP to ensure their contributions are made royalty-free.

The commitment you made to join the Interledger Group was similar but for
groups producing W3C standards track document the process is more rigid.

That is not to say that the work done at W3C is done behind closed doors.
On the contrary everything the Web Payments Working Group is doing is in
the open.
If you're interested start with the GitHub repo and look at the issue
lists: https://github.com/w3c/webpayments/

There are occasions where the group meets face-to-face or on calls which
are closed to non-members for a few reasons:
1. To ensure all contributors have made the right IPR commitments
2. To ensure that all contributors are known to the chairs and are known to
be contributors (as opposed to disruptors)
3. To allow members to talk more freely about their implementation plans
which may have some degree of business confidentiality

Non-members do attend these meetings at the invitation of the chairs and
approval of the W3C usually on the basis that they will be positive
contributors and have a knowledge or expertise the group is lacking.
There are quite a number of "Invited Experts" working within the W3C who
are not employees of member organisations.

The reason community groups were created at the W3C was to foster an
environment where non-members could collaborate and that's why we're doing
the ILP work in the Interledger Community group.

Ian can probably provide some colour if required.

Adrian



On 3 February 2016 at 18:59, Jehan Tremback <jehan.tremback@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Sorry if this a bit off topic, but I was just looking at the Web Payments
> stuff here https://www.w3.org/Payments/WG. It seems that registration is
> closed to the public? What's the point of having a non-public standards
> body? Does anyone know if it would still be possible for me to attend the
> Web Payments WG face to face?
>
> -Jehan
>