Re: Agenda Process Document Task Force 27 January 2015

On 2015-01-28 06:01, David Singer wrote:
>> On Jan 28, 2015, at 12:36 , chaals@yandex-team.ru wrote:
>>
>> 28.01.2015, 14:11, "David Singer" <singer@apple.com>:
>>>>   On Jan 28, 2015, at 1:45 , Wayne Carr <wayne.carr@linux.intel.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   On 2015-01-26 23:53, David Singer wrote:
>>>>>   apologies for this week; at a 3GPP meeting.  I will try to be on IRC but cannot promise
>>>>>>   5.      ISSUE-100: Should it be possible to publish a pr before a call for exclusion ends
>>>>>>
>>>>>>   https://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/issues/100
>>>>>   I think at least this should be unusual and a step taken only after explicit consideration. If it’s formally permitted, we need to say in the process how the nasty case is handled (an exclusion is received after PR publication).
>>>>   I don't see why there's an issue with publishing the PR.  The problem would be having the Director's decision happen before an exclusion (and PAG's outcome).
>>> Really?  If an exclusion happens at any time prior to PR publication, we can hold the train in its tracks while we look at the exclusion.
>> Not really. Modern specs are implemented as they are developed (if not to the extent that some people claim), so the train has to be fetched from somewhere already. Part of the brouhaha around EOLAS was that a lot of things had to be changed, having been shipped long-ago.
>>
>>> But imagine, we publish the PR, other organizations refer to it, implementations happen, authors win prizes…and then an exclusion happens.  Can we rescind the PR advancement and revert (to what?).  We put a note in it saying “Oops, it’s possible that this spec. has a licensing issue”?
>> If we publish the PR, without closing the review period, we are not committed to it as a Recommendation. And if there are grounds for thinking there *may* be IPR, we should be more careful of this. In practice, if there is any open exclusion period at director's calls now, you already have to provide good justification if you want to move forward before it ends.
>>
>>>>   It now says "should be at least 10 days after the end of the last Exclusion Opportunity".    If a new version of a spec is say a paragraph long new feature which had been discussed widely, it could be that FPWD and CR happen at the same time (which seems reasonable for something simple).  If I'm doing my arithmetic correctly.  It's 30 day CR review and 28 AC Review which could put the end of the AC Review at about 58 days and the end of the Exclusion Opportunity at 150 days.  So the AC Review could have ended 90 days before the Exclusion Opportunity.
>> I think the arithmetic is about right.
>>
>>>>   Why not: "must be at least 7 days after the end of the last Exclusion Opportunity" to avoid the above and add something like "If an exclusion occurs, the AC Review is extended until at least 7 days after the Director announces how the exclusion was handled." to handle what David is asking for.
>> Because it also applies to things which are almost certainly risk-free. URLs have been around for 2 and a half decades, and it seems genuinely unnecessary to worry about IPR for certain aspects of them. Why force *all* URL specs to wait a few extra months, when you can consider the question carefully, and handle the case of a spec change that deals in old material.

This is good the way it is now.  it makes it possible not to have to 
wait 4 more months to start PR for a small change that uses ancient 
technology (where any patents are long expired).

IANAL - this is how I understand the pp.  If a CR is published with 90 
days of publication of FPWD, the CR is the TR that the FPWD exclusion 
applies to, rather than the FPWD itself.  So both exclusion periods 
apply to exactly the same TR.  If that TR changes in a substantive way 
that could impact essential claims, it has to go to CR again and 
another, separate exclusion period.  So, it seems like the only way 
anything surprising could happen with the current process after REC is 
that someone has had a 60 day exclusion period for what became the REC 
and did not exclude.  Then later they try to exclude something in the 
same TR where they didn't exclude during a closed exclusion period by 
claiming it is an exclusion on the FPWD related TR (which is exactly the 
CR TR which they didn't exclude on).

I'd still make it "must be at least 7 days after the end of the last CR 
Exclusion Opportunity"  adding "CR".  Just to avoid the fact that the 
waits for CR review and PR AC Review are 58 days, not the 60 for the 
exclusion period - to let the AC see and change reviews if there was an 
exclusion.






>>
>>>>   extension rather than starting over to prevent someone disclosing random and causing an additional 28 day delay after the delay in investigating it.
>>> It’s not delays I worry about.  It’s that PR advancement, and publication, are often thought of as irreversible.
>> This is something we should fix independently. They are not irreversible.
>>
>> I'm not terribly worried about delays in publishing Recommendation, to be honest. I think there is far more hand-wringing than necessary over a few weeks of "due diligence", and far too little balance given the amount of time it takes a lot of actual work to be done.
>>
>> I'm happy with the balance we have, where process technically allows a Rec to be published with an open exclusion period (although my experience is that the unprecedented circumstance that everything is done as fast as the process allows isn't worth worrying about in practice), but strongly discourages it, meaning the director needs to clearly justify any such decision. In my experience, that means the easy path of waiting a few extra weeks is what happens…
>>
> I’m OK with a sentence/note that says “Normal practice is to wait for the end of exclusion periods.” I expect at some point we’ll turn our steely gaze to the handling of exclusions, and I would be OK if somewhere there it stated that handling an exclusion includes consideration of the document stage and whether it needs to revert to an earlier stage.  (I suppose it might go all the way back to WD if some fundamental block is yanked out from under it.)


(Just as an aside - if we ever clean up the patent policy - the 150 day 
exclusion after FPWD applies to the last TR published within 90 days of 
publication of FPWD, which makes the text more complex in several 
places.  So a WG can completely replace the FPWD with a different spec 
90 days later and the exclusion really is only 60 days.  These days the 
public generally has been able to see editor's drafts long before FPWD, 
so whatever that was aimed at may be unnecessary).



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> David Singer
> Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.
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Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2015 17:59:47 UTC