At 20:59 30-10-2009, Ian Hickson wrote:
The WHATWG is happy to work with anyone. I don't understand what you mean by "liason with" juxtaposed by "take on prime responsibility", though. In what sense is it a liason if the other group no longer has responsibility? Surely a joint effort implies joint responsibility.
Editorial comment: That should have been "the working group will liaise with the ...".
Joint responsibility increases the chances of failure as two working groups do not work the same way.
It should be noted that the WHATWG's work is based on technical merit and not on consensus. If even just one person raises a valid technical issue in the WHATWG, they cannot be overridden by the rest of the group having complete agreement that they should just ignore the technical issue. There is also a firm philosophy that the specs match interoperable deployed implementations, and that the specs not leave things undefined.
The IETF process is based on consensus. An IETF Working Group cannot change that. The philosophical questions can be addressed in the charter if the group reaches a consensus about that.
My comments are as an individual. The proposed WG will be part of the IETF. It is not the IETF. The entire IETF community will be asked to comment on the proposal submitted for publication. The IETF does not constrain the solution. It is up to the IETF participants to determine what problem will be solved and how it will be solved. There's the BoF and this mailing to discuss about all that and come up with a proposed charter. People from the W3C WebApps and WHATWG are not excluded. Ask them to join this mailing list and participate.
Regards,-sm
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