Re: Followup to "Supergroups" message to AC Forum

> Again, there's the theory and there's the WG practice. The practice
> is that WGs work around the blockers in the Process, on Membership's
> firm request.

As others have pointed out, the “blockers in the process” are there to make sure that the WG is operating within the boundaries of its charter, which is necessary under the patent policy. 

As I see it, we’ve already worked around the problem by creating the Community Group IPR policy which allows people to collaborate on new things so long as they commit to RF licensing any patents that cover their own contributions to a discussion. So the way forward isn’t to change the Process or Patent Policy to match the practice of mixing standardization and incubation in a WG, but to change the practice so that WGs have one or more affiliated CGs where incubation takes place under an IPR policy designed for that purpose, then specs can move to a WG where broad patent commitments are made for work that is in the scope of its charter.  That’s what Web Platform / WICG have done.  

I do agree it should be reasonably easy to recharter a WG to add specific spec deliverables that have been well-incubated and thus it is clear who is making RF patent commitments to the contributions that went into the spec.  But I don’t see a need to make it easy to recharter a WG in order for its editors to experiment with ideas whose provenance is not clear.



-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Glazman <daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com>
Date: Monday, June 20, 2016 at 2:05 PM
To: "wayne.carr@intel.com" <wayne.carr@intel.com>, Revising W3C Process Community Group <public-w3process@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Followup to "Supergroups" message to AC Forum
Resent-From: <public-w3process@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Monday, June 20, 2016 at 2:06 PM

On 20/06/2016 22:21, Carr, Wayne wrote:

> I don't think it works to have "permanent" groups, with broad and vague charters that don't get periodic AC review.

The CSS WG Charter, reviewed by 10-20 ACs only every three years
with so minor comments we could skip that step, is the live proof a
permanent group with a vague charter "anything related to style and
formatting properties" works absolutely fine, IMHO.

Seriously guys, between 2008 and 2013, the CSS WG moved from 30 to
65 active specs, you really think we amended our Charter 35 times
or waited 3 years to do official spec work? Not only the CSS WG
Members never complained, but they're not willing to wait and their
AC-Reps never complained. The only moment when the Patent Policy is
mentioned is precisely when we renew the Charter, every 3 years.

Let me be even clearer: we're double-tongued saying Editor's Drafts
are not official work of the Working Group when Working Group's
resources are implied. We should fix that.

Again, there's the theory and there's the WG practice. The practice
is that WGs work around the blockers in the Process, on Membership's
firm request.

</Daniel>

Received on Monday, 20 June 2016 21:28:07 UTC