[whatwg] some issues

[Matthew Raymond]

Jim Ley wrote:
>>You go on and on about how our
>>efforts will fail if this process isn't "open" in the way you define it,
>>but you seem to be the only one who has a problem with how open the
>>current system is.
> 
> No, it's been raised elsewhere (consider Kendall Clark's XML.com post)

       I managed to find the article I think you're referring to. 
Kendall Grant Clark is all over the map, though.

    First of all, he implies that WHAT WG is not necessary in the first 
place by pointing out that a certain W3C work group he's involved with 
(RDF) is relatively fast and open, yet at the same time he claims to 
"take no position" on it. He ignores the fact that the last major 
version of HTML was released as a recommendation in December of 1997. It 
took them two years just to go from 4.0 to 4.01, and they haven't 
release anything for HTML since. The so-called HTML Working Group works 
only on XHTML now. In fact, XHTML 2.0 won't even be backwards compatible:

   "While the ancestry of XHTML 2.0 comes from HTML 4, XHTML 1.0, and 
XHTML 1.1, it is not intended to be backward compatible with its earlier 
versions."

  - http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/

    I guess taking no position these days means ignoring the obvious. He 
goes on to question the openness of the group, but quite in the way you 
have:

"I find it odd that in an effort to move more quickly and more publicly, 
the WHAT site says that the 'creation of this forum follows from several 
months of work by private e-mail on specifications' for web application 
technologies (my emphasis). Well, you know, which is it, public or 
private? Is the W3C too slow or too private? What's the point of 
kvetching about the W3C being too private and then being even more 
private yourself? Not a very auspicious start."

  - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/06/16/deviant.html

    So this guy is effectively saying that WHAT WG isn't open because 
people were already working on specifications before the group even 
existed. I'm not exactly sure what he expected them to do. Did he 
honestly expect them to come to the table empty-handed?

> I maybe the only person participating who mentions it, but then,
> there's only about 10 people participating.

    If you're unhappy with the number of participants, feel free to 
recruit more.