Re: Request for clarification on HTML 5 publication status (ISSUE-19)

On Nov 28, 2007, at 9:07 AM, Dan Connolly wrote:

> On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 17:21 -0800, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>>
>> 1) Which non-responders are not ok to publish? What are their  
>> specific
>> objections and how can they be addressed?
>
> I encouraged the non-responders to give this information in public,
> but unless and until they choose to do so, I'm not at liberty to say.
>
> The specific question I was investigating in ACTION-17 was:
> are the W3C members whose patents might be impacted by an
> HTML 5 publication sufficiently aware of the impact of this
> decision that we should proceed over an outstanding formal objection?
>
> After contacting several relevant W3C member organizations,
> I came to the conclusion that no, we do not have a critical
> mass of support. So Chris Wilson and I decided the question
> does not carry.

OK, so the chairs decided not to publish despite the overwhelmingly  
positive vote, because unknown parties that did not choose to  
participate in the survey gave secret objections to the chairs for  
reasons that you won't tell the working group. Setting aside the  
surprising lack of transparency in decision-making here, how are we  
supposed to fix the spec to address these mystery objections? Can you  
at least give us a broad hint on what sort of spec changes might be  
suitable? Or do the top secret objectors just want to wait to start  
the patent clock, in which case, is there a specific time when we can  
call the question again?

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 18:53:28 UTC