xml-dev - RE: Realistic proposals to the W3C?

[Anthony Channing <AnthonyC@101Ltd.com>]

Oops!  I accidentally hit 'reply to sender' instead of 'reply to all'...
Sorry Mike... 
(I also did it with the next post which I sent to Len, sorry about this,
I'm tired, I'm changing jobs, and a long overdue two week holiday
is just three days away... ;-)

Anton

-------------------------

Well, my personal thoughts on this matter may well be too radical,
but then I am a self proclaimed anarchic-libertarian-individualist-agnostic,
so I suppose that might not be too surprising.

From my perspective it seems that a trend away from socio-moralistic
'authority' structures is occurring with the shift going in favour of new
'consumer driven' structures.  In general terms this shows a general
world shift in power from government/political/religious lead organisations
(ie UN, G7, NATO) towards business lead organisations (IMF, World Bank).
The possitive side of this is that the majority of companies are less
inclined to war and try to discourage it.  On the downside they have
a very fragmented and unresponsible attitude towards environmental
and resource management.

In our case we see a move from ISO to W3C (Sorry if I'm over simplifying,
this always happens when trying to look at the wider world context).
What this means is that we see a shift from authority lead development
to corporate lead.  We see greater innovation at a faster rate, but at
a cost of ignoring wider social implications and getting locked into a
cycle that aims at the short-term self preservation of the leading
companies.

Rather than looking back to the 'safety' of the known (ISO), or expecting to
be able to get a desirable response from the new despot(W3C) to our 
rapidly evolving needs, a better approach might be to begin thinking what 
kind of organisation can superseed the company model (note, just as
companies still need the foundation of government, this new model may
well still require (and probably will) the foundation of corporations.

What would the nature of such a radical structure be?  How would it
fund its activities?  Perhaps a good subject for debate.  How would
it remain as accountable as some would like.  I don't have answers
for these, nor the right experience to think of details.  Maybe models
like this very list, free software foundation etc are worth consideration.
A website and a mailing list.

Dunno, is what I'm suggesting really that radical, seems like the
next logical step to me... But first we need to thing of how to acheive
it.  OASIS, IETF, W3C, ISO all perform their useful roles, to do
something new we're probably better off  with a new vehicle, rather
than trying to change the momentum of others...

Anton
101 Media Ltd
Marketing Your Web Site - A seminar by 101 Media. 
Barnham Broom Hotel Tuesday 16th November 2000 9.30am - 12.30pm 
for further details and to book on-line please visit:
http://www.101ltd.com/Seminar/Default.asp 




	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com
[SMTP:Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com]
	Sent:	16 October 2000 18:59
	To:	xml-dev@lists.xml.org
	Subject:	Realistic proposals to the W3C?

	 I think it would be great if this group could help the XML
community as a whole sort out what it wants from the W3C, what it can
realistically DEMAND of the W3C, and what it must find elsewhere. If some
reasonable consensus emerges, perhaps it could be quasi-formally submitted
to the W3C in some form.

	As a W3C participant, I don't feel the frustrations as strongly as
many of you do, so my thoughts may not be nearly radical enough. I offer
these simply as starting points for further discussion ...

	MISSION 

	What does "leading the web to its full potential" mean to YOU?
Charging forward toward the Semantic Web, cleaning up the loose ends left
behind by the Syntactic Web (?) or what?  

	PROPOSALS, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND STANDARDS? 

	What do you folks WANT a "W3C Recommendation" to signify?  How much
implementation experience from OUTSIDE a working group should be necessary
to enshrine something as a Recommendation?  Should the W3C encourage
Recommendations to be modular components that can be assembled into anything
from minimal subsets to monolithic monstrosities, or should the current "one
size fits all" objective be maintained? Should Recommendations be treated as
"standards," should there be a something like a "Strong Recommendation" that
has survived the test of time and the market, should the W3C refer
well-established Recommendations to the ISO, or what?

	OPENNESS 

	There are three types of mailing lists associated with a W3C working
group: public, "interest group", and "working group".  The public lists are
open to anyone and are used (as near as I can see) mostly to solicit
feedback from the public.  Some working groups (the DOM anyway) try hard to
quickly answer/explain/acknowledge the posts on the public mailing lists,
others respond mainly in the "disposition of public comments" section of the
Proposed Recommendation.  Interest Group mailing lists are open to W3C
members and invited experts who wish to follow a working group's activities
closely, and are (in principle) where most of the "real" discussion occurs.
Working Group lists are strictly private (not sure about the archives) to
the working group and are mainly for administrivia.

	Given that there's no way the W3C is going to make the detailed
votes on specific proposals available to the public (sorry, it ain't gonna
happen, so don't bother flaming me), what could it do to maximize the
benefits of "sunshine" without drying up the information flow?  Make
Interest Group mailing lists open to qualified people who agree to respect
certain guidelines (such as not publicly revealing who advocates what)?
Eliminate Interest Groups and encouraging all technical discussion to occur
on the public mailing lists and all member-confidential stuff to remain on
the WG mailing lists?  Farm out the public "brainstorming" of specs to OASIS
TC's and produce SAX-like "sense of the community" proposals, and only setup
Working Groups when the time comes for the heavy hitters to go into the
smoke-filled rooms to sort out who can implement what when?  

	CLARITY OF SPECS 

	What should the W3C as an organization do to encourage clearer
specs?  Mandate a page limit?  Demand a relatively non-technical but
"normative" Tutorial/Background paper to accompany all specs (at least at
the Recommendation level)? Insist on an open source reference
implementation? Mandate some other formal language description?  Remember,
that whatever you suggest has to be implemented within the resources of the
W3C itself and the technical (or literary) capabilities of the participants.


	I'm sure there's more topics we could cover ...