ISSUE-33: Normative Reference "policy" is blocking IP commitments from becoming final

Normative Reference "policy" is blocking IP commitments from becoming final

State:

CLOSED

Product:

Normative Reference Policy

Raised by:

Arthur Barstow

Opened on:

2013-06-26

Description:

I described the issue in the following email (quoted below) as a reply to Robin Berjon:

[[
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2013May/0020.html>

Thanks for starting this thread Robin. (I started a related Draft
several months ago and I am delighted you beat me to it ...)

I agree the current out-of-band normative reference policy is suboptimal
and in some cases I argue it is actually harmful. For example, if/when a
Proposed Recommendation (PR) is blocked solely because of this policy,
implementers, developers, etc. are not protected by the IP commitments
that start when the PR is published as a W3C Recommendation. This
scenario isn't fiction - it is true for three PR in WGs I chair and I
would not be surprised if the reference policy is also blocking other
PRs (Geolocation?, others?).

I don't have a strong preference on how this issue is addressed other
than I would, naturally, prefer a very lightweight approach. To that
end, I'd like to see WGs have the final "say" on the reference decision.
After all, it is the WG members that typically have the most skin in the
game re implementations and thus they are best suited to determine the
related risks (e.g. if interop problems will occur if/when a reference
changes). If a WG agrees to publish a Candidate Recommendation (CR) with
references that are CR or less, then I think that decision should carry
a lot of weight.

If the policy permitted more WG autonomy as described above, there could
be a requirement that all W3C normative references must be to a dated
spec and that all such refs must be at least a FPWD. For Candidate
Recommendations, the Status of the Document statement could explicitly
state that if implementers consider the "maturity" of a normative
reference a substantial issue, they should formally raise an issue
during the implementation phase. In the absence of such issues, the
group can then (accurately, IMHO) conclude the CR's references are
sufficient to advance the spec to REC and the Director should honor the
group's decision.
]]

Related Actions Items:

No related actions

Related emails:

1. [minutes] 2013-10-28 Chapter 7 revisions Task Force teleconference (from coralie@w3.org on 2013-10-30)
2. [sysreq #7104] Please make w3process Tracker instance report all new Actions and Issues to the list (from sysreq@w3.org on 2013-06-27)
3. [sysreq #7104] Re: Please make w3process Tracker instance report all new Actions and Issues to the list (from sysreq@w3.org on 2013-06-26)
4. Please make w3process Tracker instance report all new Actions and Issues to the list (from art.barstow@nokia.com on 2013-06-26)

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