Minutes of W3C Advisory Committee meeting 22 May 95
This is a record of the second W3C Advisory Committee meeting
held at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco on 22 May 1995.
See also:
02 Jun 95: Details of these minutes are still being filled in.
Welcome, W3C team introductions
Tim Berners-Lee/W3C, chair
The meeting began at 9am, with Tim welcoming the attendees, introducing the team, and discussing the agenda.
INRIA, W3C's center in Europe
Albert Vezza/MIT and Jean-Francois Abramatic/INRIA
Albert Vezza discussed the W3C calendar of events since its inception in October. He described CERN's decision to end its sponsorship of the W3C, and the subsequent agreement for INRIA to become the W3C's European host. He emphasized that W3C would like to get a host for the Far East so the W3C can truly work together for a global standard.
As of May, traffic on the Web exceeded any other internet traffic.
Jean-Francois talked about INRIA: what INRIA is, the kind of research being done there, how the W3C INRIA team will be structured, and their areas of activity. He stressed that there is one team at two sites. There will be one computer environment, one advisory committee, one membership agreement, and we will work towards one single standard.
INRIA will host the Fifth World Wide Web Conference 6-10 May, 1996, in Paris.
W3C services and member access
Karen MacArthur/W3C
Karen outlined the two main points of entry into the W3C
online information: the public W3C web site, and the W3C Member Page.
The public site contains general information, news, and references,
as well as detailed information on specifications and areas of developement on the web (HTTP, HTML, Security, and others). The public site also contains reference software provided by the W3C (such as the Library of Common code and the CERN httpd) and pointers to other available clients, servers, gateways, and tools.
The W3C Member Page, which will soon be restricted by IP address
to W3C members only, contains meeting announcements and minutes,
updates on areas of W3C activity, archived Newsletters and mail,
and other information for W3C members.
The ftp server at CERN has been discontinued, and a new one will be set up at W3C at MIT. Meanwhile, all information available via ftp is also available via http. Our mail machine is being replaced, and mailing lists should soon be reliable. We have decided to discontinue telnet access, as access to the web is now widely available to the public.
We have merged several low-traffic working group lists (w3c-payment, w3c-scenarios, and w3c-securitycode) into one list: w3c-tech. This list is intended for all technical discussion among W3C members, and can be split in the future as needed. Please see W3C Member Mailing Lists for details on the current mailing lists for W3C members only.
Karen suggested that individual organizations set up an alias
which can be added to W3C mailing lists (e.g. "w3c-tech@foo.com"),
so that all interested people in an organization can subscribe locally
to these services rather than funnelling all information through
a single W3C contact person.
In response to questions: The mailing lists will be archived, and the lists and archives are available to members only.
Java -- open standard?
James Gosling/Sun
Questions:
- How do you define success for Java?
- Getting it adopted as a standard, with alot of users.
- How can the W3C help you?
- Give suggestions about who to talk to in standards organizations.
Terisa policy on security standards
Alan Schiffman/EIT
Terisa systems is intended to provide toolkits for developers,
and to serve as a kind of implementation shop for security releases.
The next release would be a dual-headed toolkit with SSL
as part of its implementation. Alan is asking for advice
and input from others, especially the W3C Advisory Committee.
The iKP proposed payment protocol family
David Singer/IBM
Mark Gasteen/HP
Mark outlined a Hewlett-Packard Electronic Business Protocols Proposal.
Credit-cards, peer-to-peer, and micropayment protocols
Brian Boesch/CyberCash
CGM
Bob Hopgood/Rutherford Appleton Labs
Asked the W3C to endorse CGM as a recognized format for
2D geometric pictures, and asked for RAL to be recognized
as the provider of a web reference viewer for CGM.
CGM is complementary to VRML.
HTML update: Level 2 status
Dan Connolly/W3C
HTML update: Level 3 and 4 timescales
David Raggett/HP-W3C
The WWW Library (libwww): Features and Milestones
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen/W3C
Henrik announced the Version 3.1 prerelease 1 of the Library
of Common Code. Available documentation includes a
User's Guide, an
Internal's and Programmer's Guide, and a
Style Guide for writing libwww code.
He described the channels for discussion and feedback: w3c-lib@w3.org for members, www-lib@w3.org for public discussions, and the mail alias libwww@w3.org for direct support. Short, middle, and long term plans for future development were outlined.
Objects and executable code on the net
Dan Connolly/W3C
Dan announced a Mobile Code Workshop at MIT on 05 July 1995.
W3C security status report
Rohit Khare/W3C
Discussion on import/export laws regarding encryption.
General Discussion
What are the priorities? Some people requested a non-technical role for the W3C, along the lines of commenting on the future of the web. Others requested more focus on the technical development.
Some want the W3C to provide the big picture, while some want W3C to focus more on specific research areas.
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Created 31 May 1995
Last updated 02 June 1995