HTML Working Group Charter

Deliverables

This Group expects to advance periodic revisions of HTML and DOM to Recommendation.

Draft state indicates the state of the deliverable at the time of the charter approval. Expected completion indicates when the deliverable is projected to become a Recommendation, or otherwise reach a stable state.

Work Mode

When WHATWG publishes a Review Draft of its HTML or DOM Living Standards, the HTML Working Group may request endorsement of this Review Draft as a CR, PR, and/or REC. The Working Group works to demonstrate to the Director that the contents of the WHATWG Review Draft have had wide review, issues have been addressed, and the contents have sufficient CR exit criteria as defined by W3C Process. The Working Group will look for a consensus of its participants to advance each Review Draft as a CR and will have worked to engage the community to make this consensus achievable.

When there is an unresolved objection, the Working Group will make substantial effort to resolve the conflict so that W3C can publish a REC with no normative differences from the WHATWG Review Draft of an HTML or DOM specification. If the Working Group cannot reach consensus to bring a desired Review Draft forward on the REC track, it must ensure that appropriate issues are raised or encourage the WHATWG editors to re-open issues in the WHATWG repository.

If unresolved differences remain, the Working Group will take the following escalation steps, each step to be reached only once the preceding steps have been given good faith efforts to reach consensus:

1. The Working Group shall attempt to resolve the objection, working to explain its members’ concerns to the WHATWG editors and other Workstream participants (through the WHATWG GitHub repository) and to explain the decision of the WHATWG to those raising the concerns;
2. The Working Group shall escalate the disagreement to the WHATWG Steering Group to help resolve the issue;
3. The Working Group shall explore techniques other than having a HTML or DOM specification with normative differences such as an extension specification; or as non-normative advice;
4. The Working Group may request technical advice from the TAG. The TAG may consult other experts, including for expertise not currently available on the TAG. The TAG may be able to find some consensus or explain to one side or the other any negative impacts of their position;
5. The issue shall go to the W3C Director, who examines the arguments using the record of the tracked issue, the Working Group analysis, and the TAG analysis.
   1. If the Director overrules the objections, then W3C continues its process to publish the HTML or DOM Review Draft as a REC;
   2. If the Director sustains the objection, the Director and/or the TAG may choose to re-open the appeal to the WHATWG Steering Group with any new data or rationale;

The HTML Working Group is expected to endorse a WHATWG HTML or DOM Review Draft to Candidate Recommendation at least once per 12 month period.

Coordination

For all specifications, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, performance, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, at least 3 months before the CR publication, and should be issued when major changes occur in a specification.

Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document:

Communication

Technical discussions for this Working Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Specifications will be developed on a public repository and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) will be available from the HTML Working Group home page.

Most HTML Working Group teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.

This group primarily conducts its technical work in WHATWG GitHub repositories. It may also use the public mailing list public-html@w3.org (archive).

Decision Policy

For the purpose of following its work mode, this group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 3.3). Typically, a participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (for example, via email and/or web-based survey), with a response period from one week to 10 working days, depending on the chair's evaluation of the group consensus on the issue. If no objections are raised on the mailing list by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Working Group.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs or the Director.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 3.4, Votes) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (Version of 15 September 2020). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

Contributions to the WHATWG HTML and DOM workstreams are covered by the WHATWG Intellectual Property Rights Policy. W3C will rely on that policy for assurance when advancing Review Drafts to Recommendations.

Licensing

This Working Group will use the CC-BY license, and follow the terms of WHATWG-W3C Memorandum of Understanding.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 5.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.