Re: minutes for 17 October

On 19 Oct 2007, at 14:28, Jim Hendler wrote:

> i see the following in the log:
> RESOLVED: Our first working drafts, to be published before the 3- 
> month heartbeat, will be one: (1) Structural Specification, (2)  
> Semantics. We may include (3) RDF Mapping in this list. These are  
> based on the text for each of these at http://www.webont.org/owl/1.1/
>
> we should be clear - this resolution is not an actual resolution to  
> publish

It *is* an actual resolution to publish and was understood that way  
by everyone on the call, afaict.

> as such a thing
> would be a process violation at this time

It would be helpful when raising process issues to point to the part  
of the process document that substantiated your claim.

It's quite common to make decisions...including decisions to  
publish...at a meeting where some people didn't attend. In some  
groups, e.g., the HTML WG, whose size is too big to expect everyone  
to participate in telecons, they have --- and perhaps this is in  
their charter --- agreed to always have asynch decision making (i.e.,  
by web survey). That's not in our charter.

> - i can point to the charter issues,

The charter reads:

"""When deciding a substantive technical issue, the Chair may put a  
question before the group. The Chair must only do so during a group  
meeting for which the agenda indicated the possibility that a  
decision on that particular issue might be made. """

I'll concede that this is a technical issue. So then we look at the  
agenda, which is a bit complicated because, qua wiki page, it evolved.

The mailing list reminder, which, I believe, is informative (wiki  
page is canonical):
	http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-wg/2007Oct/0065.html

Seems to be in time for the meeting (24 hours before).

It contains:

Deliverables (15 min)
    Wiki authorship policy
    Publication schedule (Bijan)

Which, I believe, sets up a reasonable expectation that some decision  
could be made about the publication schedule. To clarify this point,  
the Wiki agenda was evolved to make this fact more salient:

	http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Teleconference. 
2007.10.17/Agenda&oldid=383

This was done at 08:54, 17 October 2007, so the day of. I think the  
original item indicated the possibility that there would be a  
decision and the subsequent clarification firmly clarified it.

> but suffice to say an actual decision to publish has to be  
> announced in advance,

This is garbled. What announced in advance of *what*? You mean that  
it is announced before a meeting where a decision might be made to  
publish that that decision might be made at that meeting? That's a  
reasonable *request*, but I don't think it's a process issue. I  
cannot find anything to that effect in the charter. You can, of  
course, delegate a proxy:
	<http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/groups.html#group- 
participation>

> there's some other issues as well (usually the decision to publish  
> is via a formal vote so as to meet all these needs)

That's not my experience and I do think it's at all necessary.

> however, a resolution saying we are considering a proposal to do  
> this (that some people still object to) is fine - so that's what i  
> assume this is - right?

Nope.

There were no objections to the resolution that we shall publish:
	Structural Specification
	Formal Semantics
	And optionally RDF Mapping

By the heartbeat deadline (3 months or so from the first telecon, I  
believe).

Neither was there a request for a vote. The resolution went through  
several iterations to meet concerns of members attending the telecon.  
There was consensus.

What was not resolved was whether we'd publish these documents  
substantively earlier, e.g., next week, or by the first F2F.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Friday, 19 October 2007 15:54:50 UTC