[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
On 17 May 2002 at 12:03, Ann Navarro wrote:
> "People outside the working group" are indeed allowed to vote (on the
> entirety of the spec), that's how the voting process works, the AC reps
> approve, reject, reject with provisions, or approve with suggestions.
Ann is completely correct. In theory, the W3C member companies could
completely reject any given specification, disband the WG, and tell W3C not
to put any more resources into it. And it has been known for individual
member companies to vote against particular recommendations, though I
don't know of any that have been entirely rejected. Member companies could
equally demand that the entire specification be completely reworked.
This tends not to happen, I think for a couple of reasons.
1) the companies that care about the details tend to already be part of the
WG. Once on the WG, there's a powerful tendency to not "rock the boat" too
much and any number of reasons for people who disagree with the direction
the work is going to either keep quiet or leave the WG. In a large WG it's
hard to make sure that everyone's voice is heard.
2) There's a tendency to say "any spec is better than none"; this is
sometimes even true! It's hard to figure out the trade-off between delaying the
spec and having people implement their own interoperable versions, and
coming up with something better given more time. For one thing, often the
question becomes "is this better, or just different"?
Lauren
|
