Re: Privacy CG draft charter

>  I haven’t heard anyone propose doing any incubation in the IG,

Great.  Some of us were confused when Sam/Wendy pointed to the incubation language in the PING charter, and wondered whether anyone WAS proposing doing incubation in the IG.

> and removing the text from the PING charter seems tricky at this point because of
> re-charter-delays and issues.

Agree.  I also agree that we can discuss a WG at some point in the future when the CG has incubated at least one spec to some state of maturity.

________________________________
From: Pete Snyder <psnyder@brave.com>
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2019 2:36 PM
To: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
Cc: Michael Champion <Michael.Champion@microsoft.com>; Samuel Weiler <weiler@w3.org>; W3C Privacy Interest Group <public-privacy@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Privacy CG draft charter

>> Interest Groups are not an appropriate venue for technical spec incubation.
>
> I agree with this general sentiment. Incubating policy documents or material like the Privacy Threat Model is wholly appropriate. But the lack of sufficient IPR policy is suboptimal for technical specifications.
>
> That said, I support the work of PING and I hope we can work this out appropriately.

Also to add that PING being an IG is unique bc of the semi-formalized HR role.

So, I'm agnostic about PING being a space for incubation, mostly bc I haven’t heard anyone propose doing any incubation in the IG, and removing the text from the PING charter seems tricky at this point because of re-charter-delays and issues.

But it seems like there is general agreement that:

PING -> policy docs, revising / improving privacy properties of existing specs, HR responsibilities for future specs
PCG / Privacy CG -> incubating new, original work

So regardless of whether the PING charter allows incubation, it seems like there is general agreement to treat the text as vestigial and not use it, for the reasons given above.

TL;DR; I think we’re all in agreement.  Does anyone read things otherwise?

> I think promoting PING to a WG might be the right path, once there’s enough clarity

I think this could be good if the CG stuff ends up producing sig work, but may be putting the cart before the horse right now (again, maybe we’re agreeing?)
>
>
>> From: Samuel Weiler <weiler@w3.org>
>> Sent: Friday, September 27, 2019 5:49 AM
>> To: W3C Privacy Interest Group <public-privacy@w3.org>
>> Subject: Privacy CG draft charter
>>
>> Colleagues,
>>
>> There is some interesting privacy specification work afoot, most of
>> which is not quite ready to be in a WG.  Attendees at TPAC agreed to
>> incubate that work in a new Privacy Community Group (CG).  The Privacy
>> Interest Group (PING) will continue to handle horizontal review and
>> general guidance docs, such as the threat model doc it just adopted and
>> the questionnaire that was updated in collaboration with the TAG earlier
>> this year.
>>
>> Below is a proposed charter for the new CG.  Discussions about chairs
>> for the CG are still in progress - I hope we will wrap those up in the
>> next few days.  In the meantime, I invite discussion on the charter.
>>
>>
>> "The mission of the Privacy Community Group is to improve user privacy
>> on the web. This community group will incubate the next set of
>> privacy-focused web standards to improve browser behavior for user
>> privacy. This group coordinates closely with the Privacy Interest Group
>> (PING); it is expected that high-level privacy concepts, threat models,
>> etc., developed in the Privacy Interest Group will be incorporated into
>> the technical standards produced in this community group. Initial
>> participants will include multiple browser vendors, privacy advocates,
>> web application developers, and other interested parties. This group's
>> work will be done primarily in GitHub."  [Thanks to Jatinder Mann for
>> this draft.]
>>
>> As in the draft charter, I expect the CG and PING to work in close
>> cooperation.  There was some discussion of what tooling, if any, to
>> share with PING.  I suspect the answers will be: separate GitHub repos,
>> separate mailing list, and same Slack instance (if the CG wants to use
>> Slack at all).  I trust the CG chairs to sort that out.
>>
>> Some have observed that incubation is still (also) in scope for PING,
>> per the draft charter that went out for AC review in June.  My
>> preference and recommendation is to not change the PING charter at this
>> time.  We all understand the new split of work proposed above, and there
>> is no harm from leaving incubation in scope for PING.  PING's new
>> charter has already been delayed by other things, and I don't want to
>> further delay it.  Assuming all goes as planned, we can clean this up
>> the next time we revise the PING charter.  And if this CG were to
>> somehow not be the right thing, incubation at least has a fallback home
>> in PING.
>>
>> Lastly, if anyone has a slick name for the new CG that results in a
>> usable and pronouncable acronym and might help newcomers understand the
>> differences between PING and the CG, I would love the suggestion.
>> "Privacy CG" doesn't capture much, and "Privacy Incubation CG" doesn't
>> have a good acronym.  (I think renaming of PING might also be in scope,
>> so feel free to be creative.)
>>
>> -- Sam Weiler, W3C/MIT
>