Re: Finalizing Second Screen Presentation WG draft charter

On 2014-06-17 02:47, Francois Daoust wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> On 2014-06-16 22:39, mark a. foltz wrote:
>> LGTM with one question that came to mind.
>>
>> The proposed update reads:
>>
>> "Upon approval of the Working Group, the Community Group will cease its
>> work on the Presentation API specification. It is expected that the
>> Community Group will recharter to work on other related deliverables
>> where it is not clear enough how to proceed for it to be a work item for
>> a Working Group. The Working Group and Community Group will never work
>> on the same deliverable. The Community Group is only one possible source
>> for work under future WG Charters, but can serve to do initial
>> exploration for some future work items."
>>
>> When it comes to a proposed change that is related to Web second sceen
>> efforts, would there first be a discussion as to whether it falls in
>> scope of the Presentation API WG (presumably as defined by the charter),
>> and then it will be routed to the WG or CG for further consideration?
>>   Is there a process for this?
>>
>> It seems like some issues like privacy, user experience, and content
>> handling will come up in both contexts and I am wondering how we
>> maintain consistency and cross-communication across both groups.
>
> I cannot think of a process that specifies how a CG and WG are to work 
> together (or how liaisons are to work in practice for that matter). 
> The CG process does not say much about co-existence of a CG and a WG 
> in particular, except to recommend that a CG "no longer develop the 
> same material in parallel" (quoting from "Parallel Activities between 
> a Community Group and a Working Group" section in 
> http://www.w3.org/community/about/agreements/ ).
>
> The CG process is lightweight: CGs can choose to work on whatever they 
> want, even if the topic is in scope for a WG (and can also easily 
> change their mind). The sentence "The Working Group and Community 
> Group will never work on the same deliverable" is too strong in that 
> regard. A WG charter cannot restrict a CG. I'll drop it.

The problem with dropping it is that there has been concern about 
forking specs and multiple groups producing competing versions of the 
same spec.  So when there is a transfer of a spec like this it is very 
likely to come up whether this is a transfer of the spec with the cg 
stopping work on that spec or if work would continue in parallel in both 
groups.  The latter would not likely be considered a good thing in the AC.

Since the CG is producing the charter for the proposed charter for the 
WG and since the CG would also need to recharter to add new 
deliverables, the CG can decide it won't compete with the WG on specs it 
has transferred to the WG - or at least not on the one it is turning 
over to the WG now.

CGs can be open ended and do whatever they want (but those can be 
difficult for some companies to join) or they can have a charter that 
says what they can do and a way to change the charter.  This CG has a 
charter that explicitly describes the specs it can produce and a way to 
change the charter to add new specs.  So for new areas of work it would 
recharter - and would drop the spec it gave to the WG.





>
> In the case of the Second Screen Presentation CG and WG, the key is to 
> ensure that there is a good overlap between the participants of the WG 
> and the participants of the CG. There should not be any need for 
> something more formal to maintain consistency and cross-communication 
> across both groups.
>
> There hasn't been so many transitions from a CG to WG up until now 
> (CGs are still a "relatively new" thing at W3C). One example is WebVTT 
> handled by the Web Media Text Tracks Community Group to the Timed Text 
> WG. The CG continues to explore new features. The new charter of the 
> Timed Text WG merely mentions the CG in the list of liaisons:
> [[
> Web Media Text Tracks Community Group
>   This group developed the first Community report for the WebVTT 
> format and will continue to explore new features.
> ]]
> http://www.w3.org/2014/03/timed-text-charter.html
>
> I'm not aware of any problem related to the existence of the CG and 
> the WG in the WebVTT case.
>
> It's actually a very good idea to add the Second Screen Presentation 
> Community Group to the list of liaisons in the draft charter. The 
> liaison is only implicit for the time being. I'll adjust the pull 
> request accordingly.
>
> Thanks,
> Francois.
>
>

Received on Friday, 20 June 2014 20:56:43 UTC