xml-dev - Re: sunshine and standards development

[Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@rpbourret.com>]

Simon St. Laurent wrote:

> I'd love to see the W3C more open, even encouraging, about publishing Notes
> from non-member groups that have something to contribute, and much stricter
> about letting its members confuse documents submitted as Notes with results
> of W3C process.

I agree strongly with this.

I jumped through a number of (what I thought) relatively silly hoops to
get DDML published as a Note. (A number of people offerred their
services, but what if I hadn't had any contact with them?) Personally, I
should think it's in the W3C's best interests to publish such notes. It
gets more ideas out in the open and gives them more input for
freelancers and really small players for whom even $5K is a real
barrier.

From a practical standpoint, it would also seem reasonable that the W3C
could refuse to publish a non-member's note and do so without comment.
That would stop them from being flooded with people wanting their
computer-generated poetry to be published as a Note.

As to separating Notes and WG-produced documents, I'd really like to see
that. Early on in my involvement with XML, I found this continually
confusing, and still do to some extent today. The quick and dirty
solution would be to simply put the Notes on a different Web page.

-- 
Ronald Bourret
Programming, Writing, and Training
XML, Databases, and Schemas
http://www.rpbourret.com