Re: Public Specifications: [was: a bad idea]

"Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@w3.org> writes:
>The reason that I'm participating in this thread is that Murray seems
>to be discouraging folks from trying to influence W3C's work on HTML
>via this forum. I don't want that perception to go too far.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from providing input in W3C HTML
design, I just am noting that the overall tone of this forum sounds
remarkably like the IETF HTML working group forum, where the concept of a
proposal in the form of an Internet Draft is clear, that any valid draft is
reviewed in a recognized, public manner, and the recipient (the IETF) has a
clear, public responsibility to respond. Public input into W3C
specifications is always at the discretion of the W3C editor, which in a
vendor consortium is only appropriate.

>On the contrary: if folks carefully consider their ideas and write
>them up clearly, that can provide very high-value input to the things
>we do at W3C. Murray's right that we don't have time to deal with the
>sort of day-to-day chatter that typically goes on in public forums,
>but if folks do serious work, we're often willing to take a serious
>look at it. We even invite folks to meetings and such based on
>such demonstrations of expertise.

I applaud public input into Internet development in any way, and hope that
it continues. Both the IETF and W3C have played a major role in development
of Web specifications. I am only trying to make clear the distinction in
how and where that public input occurs, and that there is a place for both
publicly and privately developed HTML specifications.

Murray

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
     Murray Altheim, Program Manager
     Spyglass, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
     email: <mailto:murray@spyglass.com>
     http:  <http://www.stonehand.com/murray/murray.html>

Received on Thursday, 11 July 1996 13:27:49 UTC