At 07:34 PM 1/28/2010, Greg Wilkins wrote:
For me (and my company, project & community), I have a problem
with the WhatWG process as it is not sufficiently open. It boils
down to:
0) Ian has been appointed AFAICT by an industry consortium
of browser vendors.
As far as I know, Ian submitted an Internet-Draft about Websockets. According to the HyBi charter, draft-hixie-thewebsocketprotocol is to be used as an input document for the working group.
At 08:17 PM 1/28/2010, Ian Hickson wrote:
I'm happy to work with the IETF, the point is just that the IETF should cooperate with the WHATWG, on a joint effort, just like the W3C cooperates with the WHATWG over HTML5.
The IETF is the sum of the voices from the individuals who participate in the process. That includes Greg and Ian and everyone else in this Working Group. The charter says that this Working Group will take into consideration the concerns raised by the W3C WebApps working group. It has already been agreed that the HyBi working group will take on prime responsibility for the specification of the WebSockets protocol. People from the WHATWG are welcome to participate in the IETF process.
To be blunt, though, if the IETF wants trust, it should earn it. Had the IETF actually approached the WHATWG community or even mentioned working with the WHATWG anywhere in the charter, or, say, responded to my feedback on the charter, or had a realistic timetable in the charter that acknowledged the stage at which the WebSockets spec is at, maybe trust would be easier.
According to draft-hixie-thewebsocketprotocol-68, Ian Hickson from Google, Inc. submitted the Internet-Draft and asserted that the submission is in full comformance with BCP 78 and BCP 79. It is Ian that brought the specification to the IETF. Ian accepted to give change control to the IETF and this Working Group has taken up that work.
As far as I know, there has been feedback on the charter from the individuals in this Working Group. There was also a call for comments on the charter before it was approved. The timetable was also part of the chartering discussion.
It has previously been mentioned on another IETF mailing list that people blink their eyes as they read the first page of a RFC. After submitting 68 revisions of the draft-hixie-thewebsocketprotocol, I would assume that the author is fully aware of the IETF requirements. The submission was made on behalf of a well-known company which has the resources to assess the implications. There are long-time participants from that company that understand how the IETF works and they may be able to explain the process to the author.
Regards,-sm
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