Re: Path forward... (RESPONSE REQUESTED)

Thanks Rigo, I appreciate you are trying to do the right thing, and do not want to undercut the co-chairs. Let me instead ask questions that fall under your role as a W3C lawyer. 

In a prior post you suggested WGs don't have a go / no go decision. Yet many WGs do shut down and publish notes without LC. Could you explain please what the process is for doing so, and why you think the TPWG may not avail itself of this path? 

My current understanding, which I would like to confirm, is that groups shut down when WG members agree to do so, yet our co-chairs do not plan to poll the group. Since chairs rightly control the agenda, we seem to have a procedurally valid outcome. Formal objections are evaluated too late to be of use, both here and for the basis text procedural issues. 

Several group members are of the view that we default to closing up if we do not get a LC document out by the end of the month. I did not hear things that way and have been joking about shipping a LC draft on July 37th for months. We set deadlines, we can just unset them. Yet Rob's note detailing many times it's been said on calls that we must affirmatively decide to continue past July shows I have been flatly wrong: this is what the group was told, whether I like it or not. Chris remembers this as part of a formal decision in Sunnyvale; that happened about ten minutes after I had to leave early to teach that day. I am not familiar with any prior self-imposed deadlines in other groups. Has this happened before? I don't mean to be disrespectful of anyone, but was Peter on solid ground to offer an automatic shut down? If so is that operative? 

It sounds like yes, and as I did not understand that was the decision at the time, I find this concerning and disconcerting. Yet as others did have that understanding, clearly the fault is in me for not grasping the particular box we were putting ourselves in. As IANAL, could we get some thinking from those who are?

Succinctly, and down to a boolean: Do we shut down by the end of this month absent an affirmative group decision to continue?

     Aleecia

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 23, 2013, at 1:35 PM, Rigo Wenning <rigo@w3.org> wrote:

> On Tuesday 23 July 2013 16:16:58 Alan Chapell wrote:
>> I'm glad that you seem to agree with that approach.
> 
> I'm not agreeing with any approach as I do not preempt the chairs. I 
> just want to provoke clarity of the discussions. 
> 
> --Rigo
>

Received on Wednesday, 24 July 2013 15:46:52 UTC