RE: Publishing a new draft

I wanted to add:

I'd be happy to reconsider my objection if you could
actually please respond to the concerns I raised about
public misunderstanding of HTML status, and the
practical effect of announcing another Working
Draft.

For example, you might disagree about the effect,
or disagree about the importance of the concern,
or think that it isn't a legitimate topic for
the working group, or that they will be addressed
in some other way, or something else.

I sent my concerns to you several days ago
and have not seen a response addressing them.

Yes, I'm sure you can continue to stonewall
on my question and force a "vote" on the
issue. 

Personally, I think the continued deception
is quite harmful to the future stability
of the web, and that fixing it SOON
is important operationally, and that
we should do what we can to prevent
the operational difficulties that are
being caused by it.

http://masinter.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-saying-is-not-standard-matters.html


If you consider my arguments "without merit"
and thus not worthy of a response on this
procedural issue, then yes, we will have to
waste working group time on this non-technical
topic for which a solution is completely within
your control.


Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net



-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Ruby [mailto:rubys@intertwingly.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 5:59 AM
To: Lachlan Hunt
Cc: Larry Masinter; www-archive; Michael(tm) Smith; Chris Wilson
Subject: Re: Publishing a new draft

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> Larry Masinter wrote:
>> I object to the working group ONLY publishing a new draft of
>> the Hixie fork of the HTML5 specification, because the industry
>> and the public are already confused enough about the state of
>> the activities of the W3C HTML working group and the process
>> we are embarking on.
>>
>> My objection would be satisfied if we also simultaneously published
>> Mike Smith's document and/or Manu's fork as First Public Working
>> Drafts along with a clear public explanation of the process we
>> are now engaging.
> 
> Drafts should be published or not based on their own merits.  Holding 
> one draft hostage based on the success of another, or lack thereof, is 
> very much an obstructionist tactic, and I don't think the group, or the 
> chairs, should tolerate such behaviour.

I do consider Larry's objection to be totally without merit.  I also 
believe that Larry has had ample opportunity to actively contribute to 
the other documents that he cited, and the primary reason in my opinion 
that those documents are not ready to be considered at this time is that 
he and others have simply failed to do so.

The three-month heartbeat requirement for publishing is not a 
suggestion.  It's a "must" requirement that the group is expected to 
work in good faith to meet.
   http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/groups.html#three-month-rule


The exact wording of the relevant part of the Process document is:

   Each Working Group must publish a new draft of at least one of
   its active technical reports on the W3C technical reports index
   at least once every three months.

I invite Larry to reconsider his objection and focus on contributing 
constructively, but if he declines to do so, I'm confident that a vote 
on Ian's draft will pass overwhelmingly, and I don't relish the thought 
of arguing with Larry over procedural matters.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Wednesday, 29 July 2009 15:46:44 UTC