[wbs] response to 'Call for Review: Proposed W3C Process Document; Proposed W3C Patent Policy'

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'Call for Review:
Proposed W3C Process Document; Proposed W3C Patent Policy' (Advisory
Committee) for 51Degrees by James Rosewell.

Regarding the "W3C Process Document" specification, the reviewer  suggests
changes, but supports adoption as the W3C Process whether or not the
changes are adopted.


Additional comments about the specification:
   Role of the Director

The Process is very reliant on the Director (Tim Berners-Lee) to make
decisions and the Director will eventually retire without a replacement. A
lot of responsibility is therefore placed on a single individual and
requires a lot of their time to be carried out thoroughly. The AB minutes
from July [1] provide an update on work to address this as part of the
“Director-free” future of the W3C. The Director-free Plan [2] shows
current status. We would like to see this work accelerated so that all
references to the Director can be removed from the Process in an update
within the next four months.

Need for Policy

Chapter 10.4 “Rejection of a Submission Request, and Submission
Appeals” of the draft [3] would benefit from referencing a policy
concerning what constitutes a harm (or benefit) to the web. It is not
reasonable for any person or group to make this decision without a
reference point and does make it harder for proposers to pre-empt rejection
reasons. Existing documents such as the Ethical Web Principles [4], or
priority of constituents in HTML design principles [5] don’t represent a
coherent policy and are open to interpretation.

We observe the difficulties associated with horizontal review which will be
improved with such a policy.

IETF

There is often overlap with IETF on technical standards. Modifying the
process to specifically explain how the W3C process works with the IETF
would help. As a new member of the W3C we are often confused over where a
technical standard should be developed or discussed. Examples include;
cookies, tracing or client hints. There seems to be no requirement for
issues and comments raised or discussed within the W3C to be passed to the
IETF for consideration.

Whilst the IETF is the closest adjacent organization there are others that
might similarly benefit from engagement in other fields. 

[1] https://www.w3.org/2020/07/21-ab-minutes.html
[2] https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/Director-free_Plan
[3] https://www.w3.org/2020/06/DRAFT-Process2020.html#SubmissionNo
[4] https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/
[5] https://github.com/w3ctag/design-principles




General comments:
   Perhaps the Team could produce a summarised version for new members and
other stakeholders in the near future.

Regarding the "W3C Patent Policy" specification, the reviewer  supports
adoption as the W3C Patent Policy as is.

Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/PP-Process-2020/ until 2020-08-13.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Thursday, 13 August 2020 07:24:04 UTC