Re: Non-substantive CR and Director's decision

On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 09:48:11AM -0800, Wayne Carr wrote:
> >On Thu, 12 Nov 2015 15:16:56 +0100, Philippe Le Hegaret
> ><plh@w3.org> wrote:
> >
> >>The Process indicates the following:
> >>[[
> >>If there are any substantive changes made to a Candidate
> >>Recommendation other than to remove features explicitly
> >>identified as "at risk", the Working Group must obtain the
> >>Director's approval to publish a revision of a Candidate
> >>Recommendation. This is because substantive changes will
> >>generally require a new Exclusion Opportunity per section 4 of
> >>the W3C Patent Policy [PUB33]. Note that approval is expected to
> >>be fairly simple compared to getting approval for a transition
> >>from Working Draft to Candidate Recommendation.
> >>]]
> >>http://www.w3.org/2015/Process-20150901/#revised-cr
> >>
> >>My understanding is that the W3C Process allows the publication
> >>of a revised candidate recommendation *without* Director's
> >>approval if there are *no substantive changes*. It would also
> >>mean that no call for exclusions are issued as well.
> >>
> >>Is that a correct understanding?
> 
> I think it clearly says that if there are no substantive changes or
> if the substantive changes are removing "at risk" sections, then you
> can publish without Director's approval.
> 
> Otherwise it would make no sense to have "substantive " in the
> sentence.  It would say  if there are "any changes" other than
> removing at risk, you need the Director.


The essential point of the question was actually whether or not a Call
for Exclusion should be issued. Common sense would be to say no, since 
there's no new feature, but there might be corner cases, e.g. if a member 
excludes a patent about a feature at risk that is removed during the 
exclusion period (of the original CR publication), it might invalidate
the whole exclusion mechanism (IANAL). Is it possible to republish 
a (editorial only) CR during the exclusion period of the previous one?
Last Calls used to be always with-substantial-changes publications, with
their own Call for Exclusions, no overlap. I think it might make sense
to allow for without-substantial-changes-except-removing-features-at-risk CRs
with the condition that the exclusion period of the previous substantive CR
is over.

Also the current wording in section 6.4 says:
<<
A Candidate Recommendation corresponds to a "Last Call Working Draft" as used in the W3C Patent Policy [PUB33]. Publishing a Candidate Recommendation triggers a Call for Exclusions, per section 4 of the W3C Patent Policy [PUB33].
>>

So there's a bit of process clarification and editorial work needed, it seems.


-- 
Carine Bournez /// W3C Europe

Received on Monday, 30 November 2015 12:56:38 UTC