ISSUE-152: Process2014 Regresses Editorial Revision of RECs

Regress Editorial Change

Process2014 Regresses Editorial Revision of RECs

State:
CLOSED
Product:
Process Document
Raised by:
Steve Zilles
Opened on:
2015-01-13
Description:
In http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Oct/0143.html Fantasia notes:

In the 2005 Process,Editorial changes could be made to a REC by
merely republishing it (as REC). In the 2014 Process, editorial changes require cycling through PR.

The Process 2014 text is:
[[[
Editorial changes to a Recommendation require no technical review of the proposed changes. A Working Group may request publication of a Proposed Recommendation or W3C may publish a Proposed Recommendation to make this class of change without passing through earlier maturity levels. Such publications are may be called a Proposed Edited Recommendation.
]]]

Since I don't see any reason to make this more complicated than it
was in the 2005 Process, I would like to see this change reverted.
Related Actions Items:
No related actions
Related emails:
  1. RE: Approved Process 2015 Change that was not made in the Proposed 2015 Process Document (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-06-02)
  2. Re: Approved Process 2015 Change that was not made in the Proposed 2015 Process Document (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-06-01)
  3. Approved Process 2015 Change that was not made in the Proposed 2015 Process Document (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-06-01)
  4. Addendum to Set of approved edits to the Draft Process 2015 docuemtn Reviewed in March 2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-04-19)
  5. RE: Comments on: W3C Process2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-04-13)
  6. Re: Issue-152 ACTION REQUIRED: Call for Consensus: Proposed Process Change Regarding Publishing Edited Recommendations (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-04-07)
  7. Re: Issue-152 ACTION REQUIRED: Call for Consensus: Proposed Process Change Regarding Publishing Edited Recommendations (from singer@apple.com on 2015-04-07)
  8. RE: Issue-152 ACTION REQUIRED: Call for Consensus: Proposed Process Change Regarding Publishing Edited Recommendations (from Michael.Champion@microsoft.com on 2015-04-07)
  9. Issue-152 ACTION REQUIRED: Call for Consensus: Proposed Process Change Regarding Publishing Edited Recommendations (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-04-07)
  10. Re: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from singer@apple.com on 2015-04-06)
  11. Re: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-04-06)
  12. RE: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-04-06)
  13. Re: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-04-06)
  14. RE: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from Michael.Champion@microsoft.com on 2015-04-06)
  15. Re: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from singer@apple.com on 2015-04-06)
  16. Re: Comments on: W3C Process2015 (from singer@apple.com on 2015-04-06)
  17. Re: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from chaals@yandex-team.ru on 2015-04-06)
  18. Re: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-04-06)
  19. RE: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from Michael.Champion@microsoft.com on 2015-04-06)
  20. RE: Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-04-06)
  21. Summarizing the state of Issue-152 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-04-06)
  22. RE: Comments on: W3C Process2015 (from addison@lab126.com on 2015-04-06)
  23. RE: Comments on: W3C Process2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-04-06)
  24. Re: Comments on: W3C Process2015 (from singer@apple.com on 2015-04-06)
  25. Re: Comments on: W3C Process2015 (from chaals@yandex-team.ru on 2015-04-06)
  26. RE: Comments on: W3C Process2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-04-06)
  27. Comments on: W3C Process2015 (from addison@lab126.com on 2015-04-03)
  28. Close of Initial Review Period, W3C Process2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-03-31)
  29. Re: Call for Review, W3C Process2015 (from chaals@yandex-team.ru on 2015-03-20)
  30. Agenda Process Document Task Force Tuesday, 17 March 2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-03-16)
  31. Re: New Process Draft... - diff without must, should ... (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-03-06)
  32. Re: New Process Draft... (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-03-06)
  33. Call for Review, W3C Process2015 (from jeff@w3.org on 2015-03-06)
  34. 2nd Draft Announcement of Process2015 Wide Review (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-03-03)
  35. [Issue-152] 2nd draft Note for Draft Process Document (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-03-03)
  36. RE: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-03-03)
  37. Re: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-03-02)
  38. Re: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-03-02)
  39. Agenda Process Document Task Force 3 March 2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-03-02)
  40. Draft Announcement of Process2015 Wide Review (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-03-02)
  41. Re: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from singer@apple.com on 2015-03-02)
  42. Re: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-03-02)
  43. RE: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from Michael.Champion@microsoft.com on 2015-03-02)
  44. Re: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from singer@apple.com on 2015-03-02)
  45. RE: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-03-02)
  46. Re: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from singer@apple.com on 2015-03-02)
  47. RE: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-03-02)
  48. Re: [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from wayne.carr@linux.intel.com on 2015-03-01)
  49. [Issue-152] Note for Draft Process Document (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-02-28)
  50. Re: Agenda Process Document Task Force 24 February 2015 (from singer@apple.com on 2015-02-24)
  51. Agenda Process Document Task Force 24 February 2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-02-24)
  52. Agenda Process Document Task Force 24 February 2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-02-24)
  53. List of Process Document Issue Not Currently Covered in the Process 2015 Draft being reviewed (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-02-08)
  54. PERs re discussion of ISSUE-152 (from chaals@yandex-team.ru on 2015-01-28)
  55. Agenda Process Document Task Force 27 January 2015 (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-01-26)
  56. Re: Agenda Process Document Task Force 20 January 2015a (from singer@apple.com on 2015-01-19)
  57. Agenda Process Document Task Force 20 January 2015a (from szilles@adobe.com on 2015-01-19)
  58. w3process-ISSUE-152 (Regress Editorial Change): Process2014 Regresses Editorial Revision of RECs [Process Document] (from sysbot+tracker@w3.org on 2015-01-13)

Related notes:

See also the comments in
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Oct/0151.html

Steve Zilles, 13 Jan 2015, 00:21:36

This issue was discussed at the 1/20/2015 Telcon of the Process Document TF
http://www.w3.org/2015/01/20-w3process-minutes.html
The focus of the discussion was whether there is a clear enough boundary between "editorial changes" and "substantive changes" to separate cases 2 and 3 of the classes of changes, section 7.2.5 of Process2014
http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#correction-classes

The test example was the case where, in the preparation of the REC, an update was made in one place in the specification, causing a second place in the specification to conflict with the update. That is, the second place should have been updated as well.

It is clear that the intent of the working group was to make the change they thought they had completely made. There was a discussion as to whether fixing the "second place" above would be an "editorial" (class 2) change or a "substantive" (class 3) change. Arguments can be made for both interpretations. It was noted that an implementer may have only consulted the second place (and missed the update to the first place) so that making a change to the second place could affect his/her implementation. It was also noted that since such updates seem to be allowed by the 2005 Process, this does not seem to be a problem in practice.

It was agreed that before resolving this issue either way that we would examine the history of the change to require a CR/PER for class 2 changes.

Steve Zilles, 20 Jan 2015, 19:07:35

The discussion of this issue has been broadened in discussions at the AB Face to Face meeting in Tokyo on 12 February 2015, on the public-w3process@w3.org mailing list and in the Process Document TF Telcon on 3/3/2015 to include a discussion of Patent considerations; that is, whether a definition of "editorial change" can be specific enough that a simple process can verify a given set of changes are "editorial" and do not (or most likely do not) introduce possible patent infringements.

By "simple process" above, is meant (a) trusting the Working Group (and its chairs), (b) having a Team member confirm the assessment or (c) having a short AC review that could detect possible patent issues and would then trigger a full exclusion call.

The two positions that have been expressed are:
1. Patent infringements can be subtle and without a Call for Exclusions that would guarantee a Royalty Free License from all participating Members the editorial changes could have introduce an (unintentional) required infringement.
2. The changes that (typically) introduce infringements would also change conformance requirements and would not be editorial. As noted above, changes that clarify ambiguous specifications should be treated as changing (making more restrictive) conformance requirements. If this is noted in the definition of "editorial changes" then evaluation of a given set of editorial changes can be done by a simple process.

Steve Zilles, 3 Mar 2015, 16:50:50

Two changes were made in the Proposed Process 2015 document
http://www.w3.org/2015/04/Process-20150428/
as follows:
1. In 6.2.5 Classes of Changes, http://www.w3.org/2015/04/Process-20150428/#correction-classes
the class "Corrections that do not affect conformance" has been updated to be more specific, indicating that any doubt about a change makes it substantive and, in particular, changes that remove ambiguities are substantive.

2. The provision that a Working Group can authorize an Edited Recommendatin that solely has Editorial changes (see 1. above) has been restored in section 6.7.2 http://www.w3.org/2015/04/Process-20150428/#revised-rec

Steve Zilles, 6 May 2015, 08:20:58

A change to effectively remove the regression was agreed
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2015Apr/0114.html
but failed to make it into the Proposed Process 2015 that was balloted.

Steve Zilles, 1 Jun 2015, 17:17:21

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