To: iesg@ietf.org Subject: W3C response to proposed Atom Publishing Format and Protocol (atompub) working group From: em@w3.org Cc: connolly@w3.org, duerst@w3.org, danbri@w3.org, mcmay@w3.org, atom-syntax@imc.org, @@ ?? @@ This message is in response to the proposed Atom Publishing Format and Protocol (atompub) working group. [[ A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Applications Area. The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The following description was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg@ietf.org) by May 12th. ]] -- http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf-announce/Current/msg00139.html The W3C agrees that Atom is an important developing application. We feel that its specific relevance to the Web, however, indicates that it may find more success in a standards setting organization with work in similar areas. Due to its close relationship to the range of Web-based technologies, we suggest that the Atom community propose to do this work in the W3C. W3C sees Atom as an important Web application and one that supports the W3C mission to lead the Web to its full potential. The Atom group has done wonderful work achieving a consensus in the community by defining requirements and initiating the standardization process. We know from previous experience and also from the current technical and political climate, that the W3C process will give critical support and review as a matter of course, which is needed to build a viable and broadly adopted standard. What might be the benefits for Atom? - Strong promotion and deployment Atom will benefit from W3C branding and deployment history. W3C's experience in this area will make it easier for organizations and communities to adopt and support this technology and further facilitate the exchange of data on the Web. Atom stands a better chance of success when it is part of an end-to-end strategy for accessing information. - Open participation and consensus An Atom Working Group in the W3C could charter itself to operate in the public, and invite participants who are not from W3C Member organizations at the chair's prerogative. We recognize that much of the work done on Atom has been by non-Members, and want to assure those participants that they may take part fully in a W3C Atom Working Group. Generally, each participant identified as an individual entity or company has a single vote. Decisions are made by consensus and will give the possibility to respect the process that the Atom group has been able to achieve. Participation in this regard is open to both W3C Members and Invited Experts from the community. - W3C Patent Policy: Royalty Free licensing The process around working groups participation helps ensure accountability and encourage Royalty Free licensing of the technology. RF licensing in particular is an issue we've heard is important to the syndication community. More information about this policy is available at: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/ - I18n, Accessibility, Device Independence Support and Coordination The Atom group will benefit from the expertise of these groups which in turn will help ensure wide deployment regardless of device, language, or ability. Further we expect the resolution of any coordination issues arising from these groups will be resolved more quickly at the W3C. - XHTML Cooperation It is important to understand the relationship between the Atom API and the Atom document format. Specifically, we are concerned to understand how these might evolve (independently or in-step) and whether the API can be used with RDF formats such as RSS1, or W3C hypertext formats (eg. XHTML, or mixed-namespace content). Recent W3C work (pre-draft at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/02/xhtml-rdf) on XHTML2 and RDF is combining RDF's metadata approach with XHTML document syntax, allowing paragraphs of text to be tagged with information about their topic, source, author etc. We suspect further discussions (perhaps a Workshop) are needed to fully understand how the evolution of XHTML-based approaches relate to Atom and blog-oriented systems. Since XHTML with embedded metadata can be used to directly encode syndicated content, we believe the interdependencies between the Atom API and Atom document format deserve some attention, both in chartering the work (whether at W3C or IETF) and as the work proceeds. We believe the cooperation benefits to be great, and the coordination cost will be addressed more quickly if this work happens at W3C. - XML and RDF experience W3C has years of expertise in definition of content format language and model description. XML serialization and RDF model are areas of extertise at the W3C. Though when it comes to a content model, the organization is pretty agnostic (CSS, XML, RDF for example are different models). The Atom group is the one defining its content model and syntax. Conversely, Atom would benefit from direct liaisons with these and other W3C Working Groups to resolve potential conflicts and influence future specifications. - QA support We have noticed that the Atom community already has a lot of early implementation and that you have started a testing effort which is already impressive. In the context of W3C, this will accelerate the advancement of the Atom spec along the W3C Recommendation track. It's great to see that a technology is already so mature with a well-built quality process. While we recognize the IETF submission, we'd like to hear from others within the Atom community regarding the above points, and more specifically, their requirements and objectives regarding taking this to a standards organization. We'd support proposing a W3C Working Group in this area, provided there is support from the larger Atom community regarding the points mentioned above and that agreement about work areas can be reached with the IETF. -- eric miller http://www.w3.org/people/em/ semantic web activity lead http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ w3c world wide web consortium http://www.w3.org/