+1 to Olivier. That's how it works. Regards, Dave -- http://about.me/david_wood
On Aug 20, 2013, at 05:36, Olivier Thereaux <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Duncan, > > On 20 Aug 2013, at 02:42, Duncan Bayne <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Rather, I was claiming that the richer, more prominent members of the >> W3C seem to have a disproportionate influence in such scope decisions. > > > As someone who has spent 15 years in the community, in various roles > (volunteer, staff, member rep) I'm afraid you are making a couple of > significant mistake about how people and organisations gain influence in W3C > decisions. > > Participating in conversations are a core part of the W3C, and they are key > to reaching consensus - the main modus operandum of the organisation. That > said, the main way a person or organisation gains *influence* in the W3C is > by: > 1. Putting boots on the ground: committing time and effort to draft specs, > propose solutions, submit tests, etc. > 2. Implementing the specs. Ideally in a compliant, interoperable way. > > Think of it as a variant of the "rough consensus and running code" of other > standard organisations. > > This, by the way, is the reason behind the (frustrating) answers opponents of > EME have been receiving from the rest of the community. Complaining about a > technology doesn't really work at the W3C (minus, indeed, formal objections > at some points in the W3C process). What works are specs (hence the > suggestion to "come up with a better solution") and implementations (hence > the notion that "work on EME will happen anyway" so it's best to have it > happen here so the community can give input). > > Like it or not, that's how the W3C works… Admittedly, it does make it much > easier to make something in scope (get a few members to commit to work on a > spec and implement it) than out of scope (object, and hope that your concerns > are heard). > > Back to the question of "richer, more prominent members"… Of course there is > a correlation between "being a large/rich member" and "influence". Such > member companies, by virtue of their size are more likely to have the > resources available to send to working groups, which is how they will build > influence on tech that matters to them. Conversely, members paying the full > fee are more likely to *want* to send representation in groups to get a > return on their investment, and they tend to be implementors or at least have > a serious business stake in the technology. So you won't see a lot of full > members with little influence - because they would either not bother joining, > or drop off quickly for lack of ROI. > > But correlation does not mean causation - some full members are happy > monitoring most of the W3C's work rather than influencing it, and some > non-profits on lower membership tiers have massive influence because they are > implementors (e.g Mozilla). > > > HTH, > Olivier
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
