Re: First Draft of W3C version of URL Spec

> On 3 Sep 2014, at 19:12, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@annevk.nl> wrote:
> 
> Since then I have not really followed what was happening at the
> AC-level or WG level really. I heard from Dan he was going to fork URL
> at some point and I told him I didn't like it. He did it anyway.
> 


I’ve stayed out of this so far because I think there has been a lot of name-calling and I don’t think conflict and name-calling are particularly productive.

To be clear, yes you did tell me you did not agree with my proposed way forward with this (forking the whatwg URL spec into a W3C URL that would follow the same process as DOM). As I recall, we went back and forth on this a couple of times and in the end our disagreement (in my view) seems to come down to the relative merits of putting the URL spec through the W3C patent process in WebApps (and hence getting RF commitments from WebApps working group members) vs. creating confusion in the developer community. As I stated, I don’t see where the confusion arises since it’s made very clear that the WhatWG document is the source material and that any substantive changes to the document must go through the WhatWG process.

By the way, personally I am supportive of what I think Yoav said earlier in this thread: I am not in support of WhatWG or W3C, but rather I am in support of the web. I believe having a robust URL spec that has received wide review and has RF commitments from as many organizations as possible is in the best interest of the Web, and will help to further the goal of stabilizing the HTML5 platform. I believe this goal is achievable with parallel work going on both in WhatWG and W3C and with both the living standard approach along side of the W3C Rec track process.

Anne - as I said before, I think the best way forward on this is for us to “agree to disagree” on the point of forking the spec and for me to work to mitigate the issues you and others have raised regarding the confusion via clear sign-posting in the W3C document. I’d like to invite suggestions of what that sign-posting should be.

There has been a lot of talk of “copying” of specs in this thread. I do not view what is going on with URL (or DOM) to be copying. “Copying" implies fobbing someone else’s work off as your own. Nobody is attempting to do that here. In my view, the W3C version is more of a re-print (which again needs to be absolutely clear about where the source material comes from and is regularly updated to reflect changes from the source material). Ideally what I think we are trying to achieve is to encourage review by the w3c community and get that feedback flowing back into the WHATwg spec, which then flows back into the WhatWG version and through to the W3C version as well (so we get some real collaboration going on). Part of the sign-posting of the W3C version should be making that crystal clear.

Finally: we have put this issue on the agenda for the upcoming TAG f2f at the end of the month and I hope to have a serious discussion about it there. I’m happy to open up that discussion via conference bridge to as many people who want to join it. If there is a better way to achieve all these goals I’m all ears but so far I haven’t heard it.

Dan