Re: IETF sponsorship

At 11:01 AM 1/6/97, Ben Laurie wrote:
>Jim Whitehead wrote:
>> Some issues that arose:
>> - I conveyed the group's desire to receive sponsorship from both the W3C
>> and the IETF.  Keith and Harald wanted to know exactly what this meant --
>> which procedures would be followed, who would control documents, etc.  I
>> stated that the IETF procedures and guidelines would be the ones followed.
>> The benefit from W3C sponsorship would be to receive greater review and
>> exposure in the Web community. Documents would be initially prepared
>> according to IETF guidelines, then mirrored to the W3C. There was some
>> concern that being a W3C working group would mean that working group
>> documents could be kept hidden, which is contrary to the spirit and rules
>> of the IETF.  I reaffirmed our position that the WEBDAV working group is
>> open, producing open intermediate and final documents, and that this would
>> not change under W3C sponsorship.
>
>I'm somewhat surprised by this idea. Firstly, is it really the group's desire
>to be sponsored by W3C? I've seen no opinions expressed either way.

The opinion of the group, as expressed at the Palo Alto meeting, was that
we should pursue joint sponsorship by the IETF and the W3C.  This was
written in the minutes from the Palo Alto meeting (Day 2, 2nd paragraph).

>Are you suggesting that W3C members do
>not take IETF standards to be definitive?

No.

If you received this impression, then it is due to a deficiency in my
communication to the mailing list.

How did you receive this impression?

>I'd also suggest that since W3C operates in a way which is contrary to the
>IETF's practices, that it is not necessarily in the IETF's best interests to
>endorse W3C in this way.

I view sponsorship of the DAV activity as endorsement of the goal of
developing a standard way to perform remote authoring and versioning of Web
content, rather than any statement about the IETF endorsing the W3C, or
vice-versa.

- Jim

Received on Monday, 6 January 1997 16:22:49 UTC