Community & Business Groups

Goals

The goal of the Core Mobile Web Platform Community Group (CG) is to accelerate the adoption of the Mobile Web as a compelling platform for the development of modern mobile web applications. In order to achieve this mission, the CG will bring developers, equipment manufacturers, browser vendors, operators and other relevant members of the industry together to:

1. Agree on core features developers can depend on. These will be defined by reference to a variety of other specifications from the W3C and other standards bodies.
2. Compile related conformance test suites.
3. Provide to W3C (and non-W3C) groups use cases, scenarios, and other input to drive successful mobile deployment.

Deliverables

The CG will produce the following types of deliverables:

1. Specifications
   The CG will develop a series of specifications which combine core features from web standard specifications by the W3C and other standards bodies. Multiple levels of the specification will be published and each successive level will build on the previous one by adding new features. All normative content will be specified exclusively by reference to the original standard defining the feature. Additional non-normative implementation guidance may be included. Because the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) states that material included by reference does not constitute Essential Claims, there will be no new patent licensing commitments for participants of this group. The community may suggest these specifications be taken up on the W3C standards track.
2. Test suites
   High-quality, comprehensive and automated test suites are important interoperability drivers. The CG will compile accompanying test suites for each specification it releases. Where appropriate, the test suites will draw on pre-existing tests developed for the feature’s original specification. Otherwise, CG participants will endeavor to fill in the gaps. Since test case development may drive normative changes or clarifications into the original specifications, any new tests will be contributed back to the appropriate W3C (or non-W3C) group by their original author.
   Tests will be contributed to this CG under the contributed to the W3C will be governed by the “Policies for Contribution of Test Cases to W3C”. Test suites will be distributed under the “Licenses for W3C Test Suites”.
3. Guidance and Use Cases for other W3C (or non-W3C) groups
   Since participants will reflect diverse interests within the mobile ecosystem, the CG plans to document a variety of (non-normative) use cases, scenarios, and other inputs. These may serve as input to other W3C (or non-W3C) groups.

Indicative criteria for the inclusion of features in the Specification

These are some of the indicative criteria which the CG will use to select features to be included in the Specification:

1. The feature is already widely deployed,
2. It is necessary for building a class of applications that has significant market share in native mobile environments,
3. It significantly improves performance across a variety of applications, or
4. It significantly lowers developer cost.

Features whose implementation is compromised by substantial obstacles (such as known security problems or patent licensing issues) will very likely not be included in a specification until the issues have been resolved.

The CG will aim to carefully balance developer needs and implementation constraints to ensure timely progress of the Specification.

Decision policy

The decision policy is as follows:

1. Chair puts a question.
2. Chair endeavors to make decisions by consensus but is empowered to make decisions even where there are objections.
3. Chair has responsibility to ensure that all questions put to the group, all decisions, and all objections are publicly documented.
4. People who have material new information may request the Chair reopen a question.

It is the Chair’s responsibility to ensure that the decision process is fair, respects the consensus of the CG and does not unreasonably favor or discriminate against any group participant or their employer.