Fwd: Update on Formal Objection Processing [WebAuthn recharter]

Hi WebAuthn,

Here's an update on the recharter and objection processing. As you'll
see, the AB resolved to work with TAG to form W3C Councils to address
the objections, taking first the identical objections to WebAuthn and
WebApps.
(Some of the links below may only be member-visible.)

Thanks for your patience,
--Wendy

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Update on Formal Objection Processing
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2021 11:43:59 -0500
From: Ralph Swick <swick@w3.org>
To: W3C Advisory Committee, Chairs, TAG, AB

This is an update for the AC on the status of resolution of several
Formal Objections[1] to the Decentralized Identifier Proposed
Recommendation and to proposed Working Group charters for Web
Applications Security, Devices and Sensors, Web Authentication, and Web
Applications. Under current Process, those Objections would be brought
to the Director, and for many years the Director's practice has been to
ask the W3C Team to work with the relevant groups to seek consensus,
gather information, and if no consensus could be reached, make the
Director's Decision (directly or by delegation). In each of these
instances, Team has worked to foster a community consensus, and in some
cases has done so, but unresolved points remain.

As we have described[2], the Advisory Board, through the W3C Process
Community Group, is working to evolve the W3C Process to
operate independent of the Founding Director. This is an important step
for long-term community governance and organizational transparency. The
current Editor's Draft of Director-Free Process[3][4] develops an
alternative mechanism for addressing formal objections, a "W3C Council"
formed jointly by the CEO, Advisory Board (AB), and Technical
Architecture Group (TAG).

W3C Team have asked the AB and TAG to form a W3C Council for the pending
Formal Objections[5], on an experimental basis, to give experience that
could support formally adopting this mechanism -- or updating if
necessary -- for a Director-free Process in 2022. Meanwhile, the Council
determinations here would be input to the Director who is still formally
responsible for the decision in current Process. We therefore aim both
to reach sound decisions on these Formal Objections and to get feedback
from the community and the Founding Director on the Council process.

We recognize the inconvenience of waiting for a decision, and have tried
to ease that by granting extensions to keep groups chartered pending
the Director decisions on these Formal Objections. The AB has recently
made substantive progress on details of Council formation and the Team
believes that it is vital to test those details with real cases.

At the AB's request the Team has created and will be maintaining a
dashboard[6] listing the currently unresolved Formal Objections. In its
2 December meeting the AB agreed to form Councils for each of the W3C
Decisions with Formal Objections on which the Team has been unable to
arrange a consensus.  The AB will be proposing to the TAG to form a
Council to make a recommendation to the Director on the formal
objections to the Web Authentication and Web Applications proposed WG
charters first and following that to form a Council to make a
recommendation to the Director on the formal objections to the DID
Proposed Recommendation.

We appreciate that the Council process is an additional ask of AB and
TAG members, in an evolving process for which it's hard to give
timelines, however in the 2 December meeting some on the AB expressed
optimism that the Council on the DID Proposed Recommendation could begin
in early January. We will provide updates to the Membership as details
become available.

We apologize for the delays in providing this update and the challenges
that further delays cause for the communities who are waiting for
resolution of these formal objections.

[1] https://www.w3.org/2021/Process-20211102/#FormalObjection
[2] Prior discussion of director-free, in w3process or
https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/2021_Priorities#Director-Free
https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/Director-free_Plan
[3]
https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/director-free/#addressing-fo
[4]
https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22Director-free%3A+FO%2FCouncil%22
[5] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/tag/2021Sep/0004.html
[6] https://www.w3.org/Member/wiki/DirectorFOdashboard

Received on Friday, 3 December 2021 18:52:46 UTC