Re: Recommendations

As I didn't have much time to participate in the calls, here's an offline review 
of the documents.

Le 12/08/2010 07:44, Philippe Le Hegaret a écrit :
> I drafted proposed recommendations at
>   http://www.w3.org/2010/04/w3c-vision/wiki/Core#Proposals
>
> After more thinking and a few discussion, I'm proposing a substantial
> addition to the Core mission. While I understand that there is a strong
> interest from W3C Members not to go beyond standardization, I do believe
> that fostering the proper deployment of the core technologies should be
> part of our Core mission [1]. The suggestion from Sam to redesign the
> HTML main page to make it more engaging and useful to the community, by
> embracing external efforts, is part of that. As well as the proposal
> from Doug to look further into education. I added proposals 7, 8, 9 and
> 10 to that effect.

As an overall statement, I think it is fine to say that something in the Core 
mission and to later realize we don't have the resources to do it. This just 
means that we're in failure mode (of not fulfilling our Core mission) while we 
are short in resources, which makes sense. We can also delegate part of the Core 
mission (still defined by us for the Web) to other SDO, like OASIS for WS, 3D 
Graphics to W3D, JTC 1 for maintenance, etc.

So I'd say that Cloud and Social and other things (like 3D, WS) are Core to our 
mission of full potential for the Web, and so is Education/diploma/maintenance.

> Proposals 8 and 9 are explicit: "The Task Force strongly advises against
> refocusing existing people in order to implement this proposal."

I agree, but I think this should be expressed as requirements or rationales 
rather than this negative statement. How about "The Task Force strongly advises 
in favor of hiring or partnering with recognized experts in the domain in order 
to implement this proposal."

> As usual, statements of support or oppositions are welcome,
>
> Philippe
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2010/04/w3c-vision/wiki/Core/Mission#Deployment

More comments below (I'd rather not edit the wiki directly, I trust more an main 
editor role, which I assume is Philippe):

 > Ensuring proper privacy for Web users

I think this is too broad a goal, better say something like "Ensure proper Web 
privacy for Internet users" as everybody is a Web users nowadays and we can't 
help with ISP rewiring and the likes.

 > The XML activity technologies, while being considered an important piece of 
the open platform, reached enough stability and maturity that further work in 
this area wasn't considered as part of current Core mission.

Does this mean the XML stack is moving into maintenance mode ?

Let me make a comment about Maintenance.

The text offers 2 choices:

 >   1. Keep the existing charter and request an extension from the Director.
 >      ..
 >   2. Create a new charter, outlining the purpose of the Group to be for
 >      maintenance only..

I think a third option is to transfer the technology stack/package to another 
body, eg an XML Consortium, OASIS, JTC 1, etc.

If we think XML has reached a point where it's not part of our Core mission, and 
just in need of maintenance, then we should make the effort, through another 
proposal maybe, to look at the XML stack today (i.e. potential release of XML 
itself, Schema, xlink, xkms, xslt, etc), and discuss any potential issues in 
sight, any taker for maintenance ?. Maybe MichaelSMQ should give his opinion.

Same issue for WS.

Regarding Certification, I see that only certification of people is in Core, so 
let me point out the rather old page I wrote while I was heading QA at W3C.

http://www.w3.org/2003/04/certif

I tend to think that certification of programs (handling Web content) is a 
better lever for compliance/adoption/interop that certification of people, but 
since programs are still written by people, I'm ok with the emphasis on 
educating the programmers (and giving them a diploma).

Regarding the Community proposal.

 > This should be done as part of the role of the Team Contact, through 
reprioritization.

I don't like the assumption that existing staff contacts who have been doing the 
same work within the same "limited outreach" context for more than a decade will 
suddenly become happy and good community builders.

Community building requires more coordination, for one, and comm skills.

I haven't seen mention in this Core list of work on Open Standard Policy, which 
I think is Core to W3C and that we should do more of, maybe as part of the 
Community piece. There is a jungle of SDOs out there are we need to better 
organize our presence, and position ourselves, with help from ISOC, our members 
standard guys, our offices, etc.

I think that one proposal out of this TF should be to better describe the 
technical coreness of all the things we're currently doing, as alluded above for 
XML and WS (missing). There is only one section in the report today (look for 
mention of SMIL) and no proposal for further work on this list, unless I missed 
it and it's part of the TF current work to finalize it.

Probably more later as the documents evolve.

Received on Thursday, 12 August 2010 12:23:35 UTC