Sending this in case it's something WebApps may be interested in. It's a
Community Group Charter template [1] designed to create a Community
Group that is used by a large Working Group like WebApps or CSS or DAP
to do things like investigate areas that aren't ready for
standardization. It would be like an incubator group for the Working
Group.
That can already be done in separate Community Groups unrelated to the
Working Group (and that would continue). The only difference is that
for this Community Group, the affiliated Working Group controls the
Charter (and can ensure it has provisions that guarantee fairness) and
the WG can direct what specs can be worked on in their affiliated
Community Group.
Someone who wants a spec to get into WebApps could approach the WG, and
if the WG was interested, but not sure, it could ask them to do it in
the affiliated CG. WG members who wanted to work on more exploratory
work without having to license all the exploratory work could join the
affiliated Community Group and opt-in to work on particular specs. (so
it's one affiliated Community Group, potentially with dozens of
incubator specs and participants explicitly opt-in to specs their
employer's want them to work on).
An affiliated CG like this could be a good place to start work on a
risky spec that may not succeed. In a Community Group, patent licensing
for one's own contributions happens right away (not when its finished)
and the copyright license allows anyone to pick it up and work on it
elsewhere, so if it fails, but some are interested, they can continue to
work on it. It's more difficult to continue work elsewhere (like in a
Community Group) when a WG spec fails.
Just passing this on in case it is of interest. I also posted a couple
of other templates for other types of Community Groups to the same list,
both not directly affiliated with a WG. One is for potentially large
number of specs or where the scope and deliverables are not clear and
another one for a more focused Community Group that knows what specs it
wants to produce (the current template on the CG site changed to use
GitHub). For all of these, a goal is to have it be easier to get
permission to join the Community Group because the scope is either clear
or else obligations are per spec when you opt-in.
[1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-council/2015Mar/0012.html
