RE: Spec "Level"s ?

I haven't seen a consistent use of this either.

My initial reading was that this would be something like certification levels - i.e. higher levels would be supersets of lower ones in some way. I see that in some specs, where subsequent levels are adding functionality to specs. If levels are more akin to major versions, then I am not sure why we don't just call them major versions.

From: Hodges, Jeff [mailto:jeff.hodges@paypal.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2016 4:29 PM
To: Wendy Seltzer <wseltzer@w3.org>
Cc: W3C WebAuthn WG <public-webauthn@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Spec "Level"s ?

On 7/7/16, 2:42 PM, "Wendy Seltzer" <wseltzer@w3.org<mailto:wseltzer@w3.org>> wrote:

On 07/07/2016 02:44 PM, Hodges, Jeff wrote:
the W3C has a notion of spec "Level", e.g...
   Content Security Policy Level 2
   https://www.w3.org/TR/CSP/
..tho it does not appear to be denoted in the process doc
<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/>
Ought a new spec, e.g. WebAuthn, just plain go ahead and assign itself
"level 1"?

It depends. How do we expect the spec to be versioned? Do we anticipate
a level 2 with breaking changes?

thx Wendy,

Is the notion of "W3C spec levels" defined somewhere?

I'm  mostly just curious at this time and do not myself have answers to the questions you pose.

You seem to be implying that a level change signals backwards compatibility is broken?

=JeffH