Re: Review comments on 3 March 2015 Process Editor's draft

Hi Wayne


> On Mar 16, 2015, at 10:01 , Wayne Carr <wayne.carr@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> 
> We only have once a year to change the Charter, so waiting means another year.  

What forces a year here?  I don’t get it.

> 
> This isn't a hypothetical situation - the NFC WG and SysApps WG charters expired 4 and 5 months ago.  An expired WG that drifts on month after month traps any abandoned specs in it.  If the WG closed, someone could ask that the specs be moved to a CG (for the Director and AC to decide).  Without it closing, the specs just sit there.   It's not clear then even if Members should quit the WG, since they may then lose the ability to participate in decisions the expired WG continues to make - like whether  to abandon specs or to close.  
> 
> If a WG has a good reason that it needs more time, the Director can very easily give it an extension, which can be done very quickly.  So, why does a WG ever need to be able to continue after expiration?  Why wouldn't the Director simply extend the WG?  An extended WG clearly operates under the patent policy.  Less clear what happens when a WG without an active Charter publishes TRs and has exclusion periods, or has the notion of quitting a WG that isn't under Charter.

No disagreement here.

> 
> Benefits of extending the WG rather than allowing unchartered WGs to operate include: 1) patent licensing obligations are clear for chartered WGs, but not for WGs with expired charters; 2) the AC can appeal a Charter extension, but can do nothing at all when W3C management chooses to operate a WG without a Charter.
> 
> I think we should change the Process now.  If the AC or Director don't agree they can strike that change as part of the AC/Director approval for the new Process.
> 
> On the proposed team rules:  
> I don't think we should formalize a WG publishing without a valid Charter.  Do they have an exclusion period for publications without a valid Charter?

I think the AB’s thought process was that first we would clean up practices so that charter expiry happens very rarely (ideally, not at all), and then we could tighten up the rules on what happens when a charter expires.  Charter expiry is so common now that if we propose tight rules to the AC, they will panic.

>  It seems stating those are the rules is a choice to divorce the patent policy from active Charters in some undefined way that we probably don't want to get into.   I wouldn't say "extensions should be used sparingly.”  

We said this not as an alternative to running un-chartered, but as an alternative to reviewing and revising the charter.  We don’t want groups that run for years on extension after extension without anyone checking the charter.

> They're better than running an unchartered WG.  Extentions should be limited to no more than 3 months after the initial duration of the Charter, so they don't get extended for years.

Extensions because you didn’t notice you were about to expire should be as rare as any other reason.  That’s the point of the two-quarters check:

a) for charters that have just expired, either close the group, or panic (should never happen) and extend
b) for charters expiring at the end of this quarter, make sure the revision is out to the AC for approval
c) for charters expiring at the end of next quarter, make sure that the review and revision drafting with the chairs, team, et al. is under way and will terminate this quarter


>  If something is going on where they can't even get a 1 year charter identical to the previous one passed to give them more time, than the WG is in trouble.  So I'd change that to a fixed time limit for total duration of extensions.

David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Monday, 16 March 2015 17:23:41 UTC