Upcoming schedule and next steps

Greetings,

We are getting to the point where we have fully discussed many of the issues facing the group. The outline of where we are going is increasingly clear. We are looking at the following timeline:

Early September	
	Publish third public working draft for TPE & Compliance
September   	
	Decisions on permitted uses (calls for objections as needed)
Early October	
	Face-to-face meeting
Late October	
	Last Call (LC) publication

What this means for you:
	* Watch for announcements from editors that they are done with sections of the drafts. If there is anything you cannot live with publishing as a public working draft, note that on the dlist so the editors can work with you to resolve it. As usual, publication of a working draft does not indicate final consensus, but provides the public with checkpoint drafts to review, as we are required to do.
	* As we hit issues where we do not readily find consensus around despite fully exploring the topic, we will have more calls for objections. Watch for those as well: we will announce these on the mailing list with "Call for objections" in the subject and note them on teleconferences.
	* We plan to walk into Amsterdam with a bounded list of issues to resolve prior to LC publication. Some of these include the word smithing we have held off on. For example, it could be useful to have a small group to work through the introduction to the Compliance document, as we have more agreement on the content we are introducing.
	* We will use time in Amsterdam to live edit documents to reflect consensus when practical, so we have less to review after we leave. We will also create any new calls for objection on the spot, if necessary, with timelines for decisions and text we will adopt.
	* It is possible to have a handful of smaller issues remaining when we publish the LC document. We cannot have any large issues unresolved. "Large" or "small" is somewhat subjective, but one metric is: does uncertainty about this issue prevent outside groups from providing reviews? If no, we may be able to move on and resolve the issue after LC. If yes, we are not ready for LC.
	* Last Call means we are ready for comments from the larger world. We will have a freeze on new issues from the group. If this is anything we need to address that is not captured, please raise it in the next few weeks.
	* The decision to advance to Last Call will be a consensus decision of the Working Group like any other; we will make and publicly record that decision during a meeting or on the mailing list.
	* If you know your organization plans to implement DNT, but you will depend upon other implementations (e.g. you need a browser that is fully compliant to test against, you have business partners who need to implement so you can confirm interoperability, etc.) to be able to fully test your implementation, you might think through those issues. What does it take for you to test at scale, and what needs to happen? What support do you need, and from whom? The f2f may be a good time to have side conversations with other WG members to understand how things will roll out. Thinking through those issues will also help as we discuss exit criteria for phases after LC.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

	Aleecia and Matthias

Resources:

The W3C Process Document on the Technical Report Development Process may be of interest:
 http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr.html

Our process on "Getting to Closed" for issues, including Calls for Objections:
 http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/decision-policy.html