Re: Today's call: summary on user agent compliance

Bjoern makes a fair point that it will be quite a while before we have a final recommendation with which to comply or not. As I posted before, until there is a final recommendation, there is no way for a user agent (or anyone else) to be complying or not complying: there simply is no published recommendation yet. As an example, there are several websites / publishers that currently honor an incoming DNT:1 signal. I've yet to see any two that do it the same way. We can, however, make very statements about what is likely in the future, or what will be the case if nothing changes. That was my intent: based on the consensus on the call today, here is where things will stand. 

And yes, draft texts can change, including through the path of Formal Objections. But at this point in time, I do believe I accurately captured the consensus of the group, with those caveats and process points in place. Another fair point, and thank you Bjoern.

Another very important note: at least one person misread my post as I suggesting I believed Microsoft would eventually claim compliance when they do not comply. That is not at all what I was suggesting. My apologies to anyone who misunderstood me. I was not trying to malign Microsoft here.

Finally, multiple people have complained to me about in-person or in-press rudeness ramping up over the last week. I do recognize that I cannot reasonably expect anyone to tone down the rhetoric in any fora other than W3C discussions just because I politely request it. I know. But if we could all take a collective deep breath, it might help.  

The f2f agenda is almost certainly going to be very slightly late. I'll be working on that more just as soon as I can detangle from the flurry of other urgent discussions today. 

We're trying to do something that is genuinely hard. This may sound too sentimental, but I am very proud of this group for what we have both attempted and accomplished to date. Again, thank you to everyone on the call today for keeping discussions productive. Let's see what else we can do.

	Aleecia

On Jun 6, 2012, at 4:26 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:

> * Aleecia M. McDonald wrote:
>> 	Implication A: Microsoft IE, as a general purpose user agent,
>> will not be able to claim compliance with DNT once we have a published
>> W3C Recommendation.
> 
> It seems unacceptable to me for any Working Group participant to make
> statements to that effect. One might say that one assumes for the time
> being that the Recommendation will require such and such and any soft-
> ware that does something else would then be non-compliant, but there is
> no basis for claiming that "Microsoft IE will not be able to claim
> compliance".
> 
>> We did NOT hear a view that the specification should require publishers
>> to honor DNT:1 signals from non-compliant User Agents.
> 
> It's very unlikely that there would be a Recommendation if the Working
> Group cannot agree that "no means no", so there is not much of a need
> to mention that.
> -- 
> Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
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Received on Thursday, 7 June 2012 02:03:07 UTC