fyi WG extension request

Last week, the Director approved asking the W3C Advisory Committee about 
whether to extend the charter of the Social Web WG.  That email is 
below.  If you're an AC member, or know any AC members, please nudge 
them to vote on this access-controlled form: 
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/socialweb-exnt/

W3C process is deliberative, so we won't know the results until at least 
June 17th.

       -- Sandro

====

Dear Advisory Committee Representative,
Chairs,


This is a request for input on a Working Group charter extension
decision.

The Social Web Working Group [1] was chartered in July 2014 to
standardize technologies for adding social functionality to the Open
Web Platform.  In December 2016, with five specifications in Candidate
Recommendation, its charter was extended [2] by six months to 30 June
2017.  Since then, the Group has produced two Recommendations, with
three more expected next week.  The Working Group expects its final
two Rec-Track documents to be able to proceed to Recommendation within
the constraints of current Charter timeline, if no extension is
granted.

    [1]https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg
    [2]https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2016OctDec/0057


Recent events have created a new opportunity to broaden the impact of
one of the final two specifications, ActivityPub.  The Working Group
has requested an additional short extension to explore this
opportunity.  Specifically, in the past two months, the open source,
decentralized Mastodon project [3] achieved phenomenal uptake, with
over 1500 independently-operated service instances and 600,000 user
accounts.  For charts and more statistics, see [4] [5] and [6].

     [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_%28software>)
     [4]https://metadon.jemu.name/#users
     [5]https://radar.amberstone.digital/chart/fediverse
     [6]https://dashboards.mnm.social/


Mastodon is an ideal application of the Social Web Protocols, but it
was built on the OStatus protocol suite, a predecessor to the W3C
efforts.  The Mastodon developers have started an effort to implement
the W3C protocols in Mastodon, but it will take some weeks.  The Group
is pleased to see this work.  It expects implementation and deployment
on this scale, and with this diverse and vocal user base, will provide
important feedback and may result in substantive revisions to
ActivityPub.

In order to allow for this, the Working Group is requesting a charter
extension of six months.  The Director supports this request but seeks
the Advisory Committee's input prior to granting the extension in
respect of the Advisory Board's views on such charter extensions.

Since ActivityPub is a descendant of OStatus, the Group does not
expect much change to the CR spec to be required.  However, should the
Mastodon work identify a larger set of enhancements to ActivityPub
than would be completed under this extension, the community would then
be invited to propose a new charter.

This survey will be open until 16 June 2017:
   https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/socialweb-exnt/


Staff contact and W3C decentralization specialist Sandro Hawke
<sandro@w3.org 
<mailto:sandro@w3.org?Subject=Re%3A%20Proposed%20Extension%20to%20the%20Social%20Web%20Working%20Group%20Charter%20%28Call%20for%20%20Review%29&In-Reply-To=%3C02B66560-34C7-4B8A-8E02-A4017748A46F%40w3.org%3E&References=%3C02B66560-34C7-4B8A-8E02-A4017748A46F%40w3.org%3E>> welcomes any questions or suggestions on this matter.


Thank you,

For Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director,
Philippe Le Hégaret, Project Lead,
Sandro Hawke, Staff contact;
Coralie Mercier, Head of W3C Marketing & Communications

--
Coralie Mercier  -  W3C Marketing & Communications -https://www.w3.org
mailto:coralie@w3.org +336 4322 0001https://www.w3.org/People/CMercier/