Issue-152 ACTION REQUIRED: Call for Consensus: Proposed Process Change Regarding Publishing Edited Recommendations

This is a Call for Consensus to update the Process 2015 Draft with a change to Section 7.7.2, the second paragraph after the Issue, referring to Editorial Changes. (This paragraph specifies the requirements for publishing an Edited Recommendations that only has editorial changes.)

Responses to this call are due by Close of Business on 12 April 2015 (one week). Please send a reply to this message (I agree, I disagree, I abstain) to register your opinion. The CG rules do NOT assume that a lack of reply is agreement with the proposal. (See
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Jun/0160.html
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Jun/0163.html )
If you wish to discuss the proposed change, please create a new thread for that discussion (so that "votes" are easily separated from "discussion").

The proposed change

The existing Draft Process 2015 text is,
"Editorial changes to a Recommendation require no technical review of the proposed changes. A Working Group may request publication of a Proposed Recommendation or W3C may publish a Proposed Recommendation to make this class of change without passing through earlier maturity levels. Such publications may be called a Proposed Edited Recommendation."

The proposed replacement text is,
"Editorial changes to a Recommendation require no technical review of the proposed changes. A Working Group, provided there are no "No" votes in the resolution to publish, may request publication of an Edited Recommendation to make this class of change without passing through earlier maturity levels. If there are any "No" votes, the Working group must follow the process, below, for Substantive Changes"

Note: The following paragraph, for Substantive Changes, says, "To make corrections to a Recommendation that produce substantive changes but do not add new features, a Working Group may request publication of a Candidate Recommendation, without passing through earlier maturity levels."

Rationale
The main concern in this discussion of this issue has been whether one can tell whether a given change is Editorial or Substantial. The is a proposal

to clean up the definition of Editorial Change, but the decision is still a judgement call. It has been observed that the best people to make this call are the participants in the Working Group making the change.

Secondly, it has been noted that changes thought to be Editorial could, inadvertently, introduce IPR infringement. But, the only organizations that would have a licensing commitment are those that are participants in the Working Group.

Therefore, if the Working Group assesses that the changes are Editorial and votes to publish without any "No" votes, then the audience best able to make the two above assessments has spoken and any further review adds additional publication delay without adding any clear benefit.

If any organization (or invited expert) votes "No", then there is doubt about the changes being purely editorial and/or not impacting IPR. In this case, a CR, that triggers a "Call for Exclusions", and a PR, giving AC Review, is appropriate.

Steve Zilles
Chair, Process Document Task Force