Re: [w3c/charter-html] Charter must state a reason when duplicating work done elsewhere (#139)

On 5/15/2017 10:15 PM, Florian Rivoal wrote:
>
> (I have raised similar issues before, but in order to discuss only 
> what is still relevant, I'm opening a new one).
>
> Some deliverables of the Web Platform working group originate and are 
> being maintained elsewhere, In particular in the WHATWG.
>
> The charter does say that "The Web Platform Working Group should make 
> an effort to avoid differences between WHATWG and Web Platform WG 
> specifications that harm interoperability on the Web", but it does not 
> make any mention of why the work is duplicated.
>
> Rephrasing / summarizing a point I've made before 
> <https://github.com/w3c/charter-html/issues/112#issuecomment-236336472>:
>
> Whether that "effort to avoid differences" is successful or not should 
> be view in the light of what the goal of maintaining the specification 
> separately is. Differences that are a consequence of that goal are 
> likely justified, while those that are not are issues.
>
> I don't know what that goal is. I am not being facetious here, nor do 
> I believe that there's no goal. However, I strongly suspect that one 
> of the reasons we have not written it down is that different people 
> have different rationales for this, and *these various goals are 
> mutually incompatible*.
>
> I am sure that any difference introduced is justified based on what 
> the people who made them understand the goal to be. However, the 
> continued inability to write that goal down make be believe that it is 
> not a consensus based goal.
>
> Not knowing what the mandate of the WG is, I have no basis to judge 
> whether it's actions are appropriate or not, and therefore refrain 
> from commenting on calls for consensus and the like. If a large part 
> of the group's membership has a similar attitude, we'll have consensus 
> by exhaustion rather than consensus by agreement.
>
> Proposed solution. The charter should either:
>
>   * Give a high level motivation as to why the WG needs to take on
>     some work items that are already being worked on in different
>     forums, specifically listing goals and non goals. This should be
>     used both to evaluate whether any particular specification should
>     indeed be taken on by the working group, and to evaluate whether
>     divergence from the other version are justified by the goal(s) or
>     failures in making an effort to avoid differences.
>

I'm not sure how "high level" a motivation you want.

W3C's goal has always been and continues to be to publish a stable, RF 
protected set of standards for the web platform using OpenStand 
approaches [1] as encapsulated by the W3C process [2].  In cases that 
other forums are also working on these specifications we seek to partner 
with them so we have a cohesive community working on these 
specifications.  We are not always successful in attracting the other 
forums to partner with us.  In the case of the WHATWG we explicitly call 
out an objective to avoid differences which would harm interop.

Btw, if you (or others) can help us improve partnerships with other 
forums that would be much appreciated.

[1] https://open-stand.org/
[2] http://www.w3.org/2017/Process-20170301/

>   * drop all items that originated elsewhere and are still maintained
>     there
>
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