It appears the W3C want to clamp down on Community Groups (as opposed to Working Groups with fee-paying members) which publish specifications https://github.com/w3c/tpac2024-breakouts/issues/63
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It appears the W3C want to clamp down on Community Groups (as opposed to Working Groups with fee-paying members) which publish specifications https://github.com/w3c/tpac2024-breakouts/issues/63
Proposals include enforcing that a specification with traction has to move to an SDO https://github.com/w3c/cg-council/labels/revamp-2024
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@benfrancis soo they're going to open up Working Groups and membership to more people and not just big corporate sponsors, right? right??
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@thisismissem That would be nice. But so far the intention seems to be to rely on the Invited Experts system, which is how I currently contribute to Working Groups.
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@benfrancis yeah.. which I think disenfranchises a lot of would be contributors out of contributing to standards work.
There was even talk at #FediForum of whether the W3C is the right home for ActivityPub anymore, or if a move (back) to the IETF would be better.
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Jeffrey Yasskinreplied to Emelia πΈπ» last edited by
@thisismissem @benfrancis https://github.com/w3c/cg-council/issues/18 mentions a few ideas for ensuring that CG members can keep participating in the associated WG. The point of moving to a WG is to capture patent commitments and ensure consensus-based decision-making, not primarily to make new people pay. Assuming that, do you think there's some combination of a progressive fee structure for membership and a more open Invited Expert program that would be fair? Or does Membership have to be free?
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Emelia πΈπ»replied to Jeffrey Yasskin last edited by
@jyasskin @benfrancis well, yeah, probably β e.g., I'm a regular contributor to ActivityPub via issue triage and also lead a taskforce, but because I'm self-employed I cannot participate in a WG without someone lifting me up to an Invited Expert position.
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Jeffrey Yasskinreplied to Emelia πΈπ» last edited by
@thisismissem @benfrancis My impression is that it's actually fairly easy to become an Invited Expert in most WGs, _except_ that you have to be confident enough to ask via https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/<group-name>/instructions/, or the Chair has to remember on their own.
I've sent https://github.com/w3c/charter-drafts/pull/598 to try to improve the IE situation.
As a self-employed CG-taskforce lead, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that you should be an Invited Expert, and we should fix the docs to ensure that.
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Emelia πΈπ»replied to Jeffrey Yasskin last edited by
@jyasskin @benfrancis I mean, I'd not be entirely against paying a small fee for membership as a self-employed person (I can probably write in down in my taxes anyway), but such just simply does not exist.
The membership tiers very much so skew towards the large corporations.