At this point I am really confused about where to discuss geolocation
APIs, and I would rather not have it bounce back and forth. Maybe we
should just wait until the chartering process reaches its conclusion.
Regards,
Maciej
On Jun 3, 2008, at 7:24 AM, Doug Schepers wrote:
Hi, Ian-
Ian Hickson wrote (on 6/3/08 6:04 AM):
On Mon, 2 Jun 2008, Doug Schepers wrote:
Matt Womer and I have started a new email list for discussing
geolocation. The new list, public-geolocation [1], will be
archived, and the intent is for it to be the public list for the
planned Geolocation WG:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-geolocation/
Could we please keep the discussion to this group? It seems like
most people on this group agree that the work should happen in this
group, and it would be very confusing to have to move stuff back
and forth, especially if the charter proposal for geo fails, as
seems likely given several browser vendors have requested that it
stay in this group.
I appreciate that sentiment, and I see the browser vendors as a
vital constituency in a successful Geolocation API specification.
However, they are not the only stakeholders.
To make this a truly open and universal API with broad uptake, we
want to cultivate the participation of other industries in addition
to browser vendors; camera manufacturers, GPS vendors, car makers,
mobile phone operators, other standards bodies, etc. While some of
them may have no direct interest in an API, they are likely to have
insight into other aspects of geolocation that will inform an
effective API. Many of them have shown interest in this in the past.
From an IPR perspective, in order for a large company (or other
organization) to get involved in the WG, they would have to do a
wide-ranging (and lengthy and expensive) patent search. To join the
WG, the company's patent search would have to cover *everything*
that the WebApps WG is doing, not just geolocation. As you know,
geolocation itself is a very mature technology, and there are
hundreds of patents regarding its minutiae; if it turns out that the
work we do ends up being contentious and spawning a PAG (Patent
Advisory Group), it is better that it be isolated and not slow down
the work going on in the rest of the WebApps WG.
In addition to this, the vast majority of topics and emails on this
list will not concern these other folks at all; it is rather
overwhelming to get involved in such a high-traffic (and frankly
contentious) list, especially if you aren't already in Web standards
culture.
So, regardless of where the actual deliverable ends up, it is
therefore better to have a dedicated mailing list, for exactly the
reason you state: it's confusing to have it move around, and keeping
it on one list devoted to the topic will be much easier to track.
If it happens that the Geolocation WG chartering fails, then the
list can simply be attached to the WebApps WG. Easy.
There is no additional burden on the WebApps WG participants to
subscribe to one more list (or join one more WG), and there is a
substantial burden on other interested parties in monitoring the
public WebApps list. Seems like a clear choice to me.
So, I'd respectfully ask that geolocation topics be conducted on
public-geolocation, rather than slowing down the technical
discussion by debating where we should be doing the work.
Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, SVG, CDF, and WebAPI