[whatwg] Re: Is this introducing incompatibilities with future W3C work

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Malcolm Rowe wrote:
>
> The roadmap is pretty clearly laid out in the group's Charter. There's
> only one bit that isn't, and that's the intention to submit to a
> standards organisation. I think I remember someone saying that we can't
> talk about specific standards organisations, but I don't think there's
> anything wrong with adding a note about the intent to the charter. Ian?

It's not a process issue, which is why it isn't in the charter -- the
WHATWG is not a member of a standards organisation and has no real legal
or official standing, and therefore could not submit anything to anyone
anyway. Nor are the members of the WHATWG actually members of any
standards organisations, although some of their employers are.

Those employers intend to submit whatever comes out of WHATWG to a
standards organisation, because they want these openly developed specs to
be official standards. This is actually mentioned on the whatwg.org front
page (at the bottom). And it was mentioned in the announcement.

The W3C would be an obvious organisation to submit work to, however the
W3C has a policy that its members are not allowed to announce intent to
submit work to the W3C, a policy which extends to the employees of the
member companies (such as myself).

Also, frankly, it's much too early to say exactly where this work would be
submitted. Atom has, as I understand it, found that the IETF is a better
forum for their kind of work than the W3C.

This will all be discussed in much more detail when it becomes more
relevant, I'm sure.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'