Re: Items not listed as "new" in the draft charter

On Mar 29, 2010, at 5:25 PM, Doug Schepers wrote:

> Hi, Maciej-
>
> I'm a little frustrated to be having this conversation now, after I  
> tried for several weeks to get comments on the charter before  
> sending it to W3M, and then to the AC.  There was substantial  
> discussion on both the member-only list and on this public list  
> (which you engaged in), and the appropriate time to raise these  
> issues was then.

I didn't notice these issues then - I didn't think to carefully  
compare the new charter's deliverables with the old. It's not my  
intent to cause trouble by reporting these issues late in the game. It  
just seemed like this was a bug in the charter worth fixing, even if  
it's reported later than we hoped.


> I agree with the goal of transparency, but the chief rationale for a  
> charter is as an overview, not as a detailed history or exhaustive  
> scope delineation; that is what the links to the documents  
> themselves are for (where those are available).  It is unusual to be  
> asked to go into this level of detail in the scope of a chartering  
> review in the AC, and I haven't seen evidence that others share your  
> concerns.  I am extremely reluctant to establish a precedent here,  
> when rechartering is already a major pain.

Doug, you made the new wiki page and explicitly asked for feedback. If  
you want to send it as-is, I am not going to complain (any more than I  
already have). I am just trying to review what you sent, as you seemed  
to suggest should be done. It was not my intent to mess with you, and  
I apologize if it came off that way. I know that I can be more blunt  
than I intend at times.


>
> For example, I made a mistake in the previous charter by relying too  
> heavily on the descriptions of specs from their abstracts, while the  
> group as a whole did not have consensus on the scope of those  
> deliverables.  In the examples you cite here, I was too precise: the  
> Web Database one (where we all agreed that we wanted the  
> functionality, but had disagreement on whether it would be based on  
> SQL or B-Trees); and the secure cross-domain scripting one (where  
> there are disagreements about the mechanism).  I was glad to be  
> given the opportunity to correct those mistakes.

I think the UMP and IndexedDB entries are reasonable as given on the  
wiki page now.

My only serious concern is the Programmable HTTP Caching and Serving  
entry - I think it's just factually incorrect.

Here is the first Editor's Draft of WebSimpleDB: <http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2006/webapi/WebSimpleDatabase/Attic/Overview.html?rev=1.1&content-type=text/html;%20charset=iso-8859-1 
 >

It does not include Programmable HTTP Caching and Serving. I just  
checked every single CVS revision of WebSimpleDatabase and  
WebSimpleDB, and none of them include it. (Some early revisions do  
*mention* DataCache, but as a separate spec they might interact with,  
not as part of WebSimpleDatabase itself).

In fact, the first Editor's Draft of DataCache dates back to July 15,  
2009: <http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2006/webapi/DataCache/Overview.html?rev=1.1&content-type=text/html;%20charset=iso-8859-1 
 >. But WebSimpleDatabase was first committed on September 3. So it  
seems physically impossible for DataCache to be a split from  
IndexedDB, since it became a work item *before* IndexedDB did. Not  
only that, but DataCache is not even close to in scope for the  
previous Web Storage work item, while you've made a reasonable case  
that IndexedDB is similar in spirit, if not in technical details.


>
> Perhaps at this point, if you have specific changes you would like  
> made, it would be best to have your AC rep describe them in the  
> normal course of AC review, or to discuss them in the AC forum?

You're welcome to take my feedback or leave it, but I really feel like  
the wiki page is making a factually inaccurate claim. If I am somehow  
mistaken in my analysis above, then my apologies, and I would  
appreciate if you would tell me where I went wrong. But I'm really  
trying to help you make this page accurate, not to jerk you around.  
Again, sorry if my feedback came off as overly negative.


Regards,
Maciej