Re: Note to editors - updating "status of CR" to reflect interoperability testing/date of estimated PR entrance

On Dec 10, 2014 6:26 AM, "Harry Halpin" <hhalpin@w3.org> wrote:
>
> During the CR transition call, the Director felt we were not explicitly
> clear enough about the status of the "browser profile", although he was
> happy to resolved the issue. I will thus have to link to one of the
> editorial notes in the spec's status with the proposed criteria below
> and a reference to the fact all "algorithms" are non-normative. The goal
> is to make sure implementers know right now that all algorithms are not
> supported cross browser, but should know after PR.
>
> In particular, the proposal was that we have two interoperable
> implementations for every algorithm listed in the spec body. However,
> the director is happy with algorithms being non-normative as long as
> there is a clear browser profile of interoperable algorithms.
> Interoperability will be determined by the test-suite. That is in line
> with WG discussions. However, if folks in the WG have an objection,
> please mention now.

I still remain unconvinced we will be able to make meaningful progress or
normative requirement, given that both politics and local policy directly
affect what users experience, and so the availability of an algorithm
during a given browsing session with a given user agent will ALWAYS remain
non guaranteed.

Our success criteria for continuing to include an algorithm in the spec
requires interoperable implementations, and I have no objection there.

Discussing a browser profile as a way of trimming the list of
useless/vanity algorithms, I also agree there.

But while I support exploring the possibility of discussing a browser
profile, and while I absolutely thing it is a TBD, I do not and cannot
guarantee that we will be supportive of a normative requirement for
something that is as much a deployment/user configuration issue as it is a
specification issue, nor when making an algorithm normative would inhibit
future security improvements.

>
> We also estimated  to the WG that we exit PR at estimated date of "March
> 12 2015". Again, usually 3 months is the minimum to get a unified
> test-suite together, and we're working in the fact that there is
> Christmas vacation soon.
>
>    cheers,
>       harry
>