[whatwg] Patent Policy and Process

[Jim Ley]

"Ian Hickson" <ian at hixie.ch>
>> It doesn't actually matter though if someone is being ignored right?
>
> I don't really understand what you are asking for.

Simply clarity and an agreement that's there's no defined process for public
comments and the result of this work is purely the result of the decisions
of the Working Group, and if they choose to listen to the mailing li st.

> I really don't understand what you mean by "proprietary" in this context.
> The work here is not "owned by a private individual or corporation under a
> trademark or patent",

It's owned by 7 private individuals as a collective, and we don't know about
the trademark or patent encumbarances of those.  I don't agree it's open.

> nor is it "a product not conforming to open-systems
> standards,

So you're saying that Web Forms 2.0 will not have any incompatibilities with
existing open-system standards, including W3 ones?   At the moment the draft
is non-conformant to many of those, it's good to know they'll be changed.

> As I understand it, W3C process states that members are not allowed to
> announce that they are going to submit work to the W3C.

Which of the 7 Members are members of the W3C ?  (I know your companies are,
but you keep telling us you're individuals working outside of the
companies.)

> "Each document shall have an assigned editor. Editors should reflect the
> consensus opinion of the working group when writing their specifications".
> Is that unclear?

Nope, that's not unclear in the slightest, but you said:

| Because specs that are designed by committee largely suck. In fact of all
| the specs I've been involved with, I can pretty much state categorically
| that all those that were written by a single editor taking input from
| others but being basically autonomous are better than all those where the
| design was driven by committees and votes.

Which I see as very different as the wording in the charter, and that WHATWG
using the committee method seems strange as you've said it designs worse
specs, than having the single editor authoring it.

Jim.