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Community & Business Groups

Web Bluetooth Community Group Charter

Jeffrey Yasskin | Posted on:

This is a copy of the official charter at https://github.com/WebBluetoothCG/web-bluetooth/blob/gh-pages/charter.md.

Web Bluetooth Community Group Charter

Goals

Allow websites to communicate with devices in a secure and privacy-preserving way. In particular the Web Bluetooth API will focus on minimizing the device attack surface exposed to malicious websites, possibly by removing access to some existing Bluetooth features that are hard to implement securely. Further, the API will anticipate a user interface to select and approve access to devices as opposed to assuming certification and installation.

Scope of Work

The Web Bluetooth Use Cases document describes the use cases the group aims to address with the Web Bluetooth API. The specification focuses on the Bluetooth 4 GATT protocol in the Central and Client roles, over either a BR/EDR or LE connection, and intends to support communication with devices that implement Bluetooth 4.0, 4.1, or 4.2.

Out of Scope

  • Communication over arbitrary L2CAP channels, RFCOMM channels, or other stream and socket-based channels.

Deliverables

If documents (including Specifications) from this Community Group are adopted by W3C Working Groups, it is requested that the W3C apply dual licensing to the Working Group version to license the work under a permissive copyright license, preferably a license compatible with the W3C Community Group CLA. An example of dual licensing in Working Groups can be found in the HTML WG Charter.

Community Group Reports that are Specifications

  • Web Bluetooth API to discover and communicate with devices over the Bluetooth 4 wireless standard using the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT). See the Web Bluetooth API that serves as the initial input.

This could be published as either one or a set of related specifications.

Community Group Reports that are not Specifications

The group MAY produce other Community Group Reports within the scope of this charter but that are not Specifications covered by the CLA. Such reports may include:

  • A description of the Web Bluetooth API’s security model, including one or more potential ceremonies through which a user grants limited access to a device.

Test Suites and Other Software

The group MAY produce test suites and other software to support the Specifications. This software will be hosted in the WebBluetoothCG GitHub organization under the Apache 2 license. This software may include:

  • A test suite for the Web Bluetooth API.
  • Polyfills for the Web Bluetooth on top of existing native APIs like Chrome Apps and Cordova.
  • Demo applications and debugging tools for developers using the Web Bluetooth API.

Dependencies or Liaisons

  • Web Application Security Working Group. Because the Web Bluetooth specification grants new capabilities to websites, the group should coordinate with the Web Application Security Working Group to ensure the API receives sufficient review from a security perspective.

  • Web NFC Community Group. The Web Bluetooth Community Group will closely follow the work of the Web NFC Community Group, specifically, the Web NFC API, exploring the similarities of the approach on using these technologies by Web pages where applicable. Specifically, the group will coordinate with the Web NFC Community Group with regard to the NFC handover.

  • Bluetooth SIG. The Web Bluetooth Community Group defines an API that builds atop Bluetooth APIs provided by the underlying platform, defined by Bluetooth SIG. The group may request changes to the underlying platform through the Bluetooth SIG, if such changes are needed in order to better serve the web platform.

Community and Business Group Process

Terms of in this charter that conflict with those of the Community and Business Group Process are void.

Work Limited to Charter Scope

The group will not publish Community Group Reports that are Specifications on topics other than those listed under “Community Group Reports that are Specifications” above. See below for how to modify the charter. The CLA applies to these Community Group Reports.

Contribution Mechanics

Community Group Participants agree that all Contributions will be documented in pull requests and commits for a particular document in the group’s GitHub repository.

For Contributions to Specifications, if someone other than the Contributor makes the pull request, the pull request MUST indicate who the request was made on behalf of and MUST provide a link to the archived change request in a GitHub Issue or in the archived Community Group contrib or general mail list. This could be a link to archived meeeting minutes that clearly indicate who requested changes to a Specification. The information MUST be specific enough to easily determine who the Contributors were and that the intention was to change a particular Specification.

For software, the GitHub Contributing and License files describes how to Contribute and the license under which Contributions are made.

Chair Selection

Participants in this group choose their Chair(s) and can replace their Chair(s) at any time using whatever means they prefer. However, if 5 participants—no two from the same organization—call for an election, the group must use the following process to replace any current Chair(s) with a new Chair, consulting the Community Development Lead on election operations (e.g., voting infrastructure and using RFC 2777).

  1. Participants announce their candidacies. Participants have 14 days to announce their candidacies, but this period ends as soon as all participants have announced their intentions. If there is only one candidate, that person becomes the Chair. If there are two or more candidates, there is a vote. Otherwise, nothing changes.
  2. Participants vote. Participants have 21 days to vote for a single candidate, but this period ends as soon as all participants have voted. The individual who receives the most votes—no two from the same organization—is elected chair. In case of a tie, RFC2777 is used to break the tie. An elected Chair may appoint co-Chairs.

Participants dissatisfied with the outcome of an election may ask the Community Development Lead to intervene. The Community Development Lead, after evaluating the election, may take any action including no action.

Decision Process

This group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the group discusses an issue on the mailing list and there is a call from the group for assessing consensus, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision and any objections. Participants may call for an online vote if they feel the Chair has not accurately determined the consensus of the group or if the Chair refuses to assess consensus. The call for a vote must specify the duration of the vote
which must be at least 7 days and should be no more than 14 days. The Chair must start the vote within 7 days of the request. The decision will be based on the majority of the ballots cast. 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.

Transparency

The group will conduct all of its technical work in public.

Discussions MAY take place on the group’s public mailing list. Other discussions MAY take place using Issues in the group’s GitHub repository. Other contributions MAY be also be directly posted to the contrib list. For convenience, GitHub issues and pull requests will be archived to the group’s public-web-bluetooth-log list.

Meetings MAY be restricted to Community Group participants, but a public summary or minutes MUST be posted to the group’s public mail list.

Any decisions reached at any meeting are tentative. Any group participant may object to a decision reached at a meeting within 7 days of publication of the decision on the mail list. That decision must then be confirmed on the mail list by the Decision Process above.

Amendments to this Charter

The group can decide to work on a proposed amended charter, editing the text using the Decision Process described above. The decision on whether to adopt the amended charter is made by conducting a 30-day vote on the proposed new charter. The new charter, if approved, takes effect on either the proposed date in the charter itself, or 7 days after the result of the election is announced, whichever is later. A new charter must receive 2/3 of the votes cast in the approval vote to pass. The group may make simple corrections to the charter such as deliverable dates by the simpler group decision process rather than this charter amendment process. The group will use the amendment process for any substantive changes to the goals, scope, deliverables, decision process or rules for amending the charter.

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