WAI/IPO/W3C

I'm sending this mail to both lists since different persons asked for
it and they are not all on one list.

The reason W3C is creating both a project (with a working group and an
interest group, that I'm running) and an International Program Office
(IPO) is so that people who wish to contribute to the work but who are
not W3C members (and cannot become members) may work through the IPO.

This is our basic commitment to openness in this project, this is
without precedent for us, and we would really appreciate your help in
getting this message out to the community!

Now, things are a little more complicated since we already have a
working group operational but no IPO so far.
 
The existing W3C projects have rules that we have to comply with and
they do allow invited experts. But WAI is different in that there is a
majority of non-member participants, and although I've been leaning
toward letting people in the WG or the IG quite easily, I have to be
more careful in terms of giving access to the W3C reserved member area
at large (which is what an invited expert usually get when they
participate to one of our project).

So right now, I'm trying to work more by email and less by web, with
the intent to "regularize" the situation later on when the IPO is
active and we can create a framework on our web site to cope with
affluence of non-member access to the WAI WG page.

People need to understand that we're kind of in stand-by mode til this
happens, and that we're doing our best to accomodate both the W3C
process and the WAI necessary openess.

Chuck asked for the status of the IPO. I'm currently polling my
management to understand what is known and can be reported (in terms
of hiring a director and reception of funding). More on that later.

Received on Tuesday, 10 June 1997 05:43:28 UTC