Re: Purpose (and Naming) of LCCR

On 11/28/2013 2:05 AM, fantasai wrote:
> The old Process titled the Candidate Recommendation phase as
>   "Call for Implementations"
> described its purpose as
>   "At this step, W3C believes the technical report is stable
>   and appropriate for implementation."
> and announces their publication as
>   "W3C Invites Implementations"
> puts in its status section boilerplate
>   "A Candidate Recommendation is a document that has been widely
>   reviewed and is ready for implementation."
> The signaling was largely around "we think this is stable, and
> we'd like it to be implemented so we can be sure".
>
> The new process proposal removes a lot of this wording, leaving only
>   "gather implementation experience"
> as one of its purposes in the definition. There is no longer a strong
> sense that CR is particularly encouraging implementation experience
> at this stage, any more than any other stage. My interpretation is
> thus that LCCR is not intended to signal anything wrt implementation.
>
> On the other hand, there is quite a bit of discussion around commenting
> deadlines:
>   "signal to the wider community that a final review should be done"
>   "begin formal review by the Advisory Committee"
>   "must specify the deadline for comments, which must be at least
>    four weeks after publication, and should be longer for complex
>    documents"
> the last of which expects that a CR should only be a CR for something
> like 4 weeks. If it's a commenting "deadline", then one isn't expecting
> it to accept comments for a longer amount of time.
> And then there's
>   "Last Call Candidate Recommendations will normally be accepted as
>    Recommendations. Announcement of a different next step should
>    include the reasons why the change in expectations comes at so
>    late a stage."
> which implies that a CR transitioning back into CR is not expected.
> Only CRs transitioning to RECs are expected.
>
> Based on the new Process proposal, I would expect spec work to follow
> the following steps:
>
>   1. Cycle through WD for a long time as feedback and implementation
>      and testing and usability experience is gathered. (Since CR
>      doesn't signal anything except "we're going to REC in 4 weeks",
>      and carries a lot of extra overhead for making substantive edits
>      there is no justification at all to move the spec out of WD.)
>
>   2. Once you have proof of implementability and all the other
>      criteria for REC are satisfied other than the last 4 weeks of
>      review, and you publish LCCR to give people that last chance
>      to stop the presses.

This seems different from what is anticipated in the current proposed 
Chapter 7.

You don't need to have proof of implementability to enter LCCR.  You 
only need to document how the implementation experience will be 
demonstrated.  Showing that it has implementation experience is not 
until REC.

In addition, REC requires that testing requirements have been met.

>
>   3. 5-6 weeks later, publish REC. You're done.
>
> Which leads me to conclude that while LCCR is still an awkward name,
> my previous suggestion [1] is totally wrong and
>   Last Call Candidate Recommendation
> should be renamed to either
>   Last Call
> or
>   Proposed Recommendation
> both of which were short, deadlined review phases, and not to
>   Candidate Recommendation
> which was a long phase with a minimum (not maximum) time period
> for gathering implementation-based feedback.
>
> [1] 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2013Oct/0098.html
>
> Basically, what I'm saying is that the new Process proposal effectively
> folds WD+CR together as WD, and LC+PR together as LCCR. It does not
> fold LC+CR+PR together (as advertised).
>
> If the workflow outlined above is what the AB intended, then great,
> works as intended, but please adjust the name accordingly and advertise
> your proposed Process changes more accurately. :)
>
> (If, on the other hand, it's not actually what the AB intended, then
> its new Process draft is all wrong.)
>
> ~fantasai
>

Received on Thursday, 28 November 2013 15:15:58 UTC