However, I don't think this is particularly contentious. We have lots
of documents for which one of the "Authors" hasn't made any input for
several revisions.
See the Jingle XEPs for example. I doubt the Google folks listed as
authors have looked at this spec in a _decade_ (and at least one of them
has left google).
Removing someone who did a lot of work on a specification feels bad so
people tend to avoid doing.
I see three cases for moving Authors to a "Previous
Authors" section:
a) This legal issue, which might expose authors and their employers.
By clearly marking that an author is not current, it should address
the concerns of (for example) Cisco's legal department.
b) The case where an Author discovers their name still against a XEP
and is concerned that the XEP misrepresents their views. I believe we
have had such cases, and although obviously Authors can already
request their removal in entirety, this also removes all
acknowledgement for previous hard work.
Yes, I've had that situation with Peter once in the past. Resolved
happily in a subsequent revision and we talked a lot thereafter :-)
c) The case where Authors are simply unresponsive to concrete
proposals and stall the standards process. While Council can again
remove an Author entirely, this often seems like a nuclear option - as
if Council is punishing, rather than simply moving things along.
I see, on the other hand, no advantage to *not* having a Previous
Authors section which properly acknowledges those who have put
considerable effort into the document. I'm also happy to list these at
the top of the document, maybe just like:
+1 -- this seems to work well for the W3C. It is also a bigger
acknowledgement than just adding them to the list of people who contributed.
Also thank you for taking the time to raise this!
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