From: Eric Miller <em@xxxxxx>
Date: May 12, 2004 5:48:59 PM EDT
To: Dan Connolly <connolly@xxxxxx>, iesg@xxxxxxxx, Martin Duerst
<duerst@xxxxxx>
Cc: Dan Brickley <danbri@xxxxxx>, Max Froumentin <mf@xxxxxx>, Matt May
<mcmay@xxxxxx>, atom-syntax@xxxxxxx
Subject: W3C response to proposed Atom Publishing Format and Protocol
(atompub) working group
This message is in response to the proposed Atom Publishing Format and
Protocol (atompub) working group.
[[
A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Applications Area.
The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The following
description
was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please
send
your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg@xxxxxxxx) by May 12th.
]]
--
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf-announce/Current/msg00139.html
The W3C agrees that Atom is an important developing application. We
feel that its specific relevance to the Web, however, indicates that
it may find more success in a standards setting organization with work
in similar areas. Due to its close relationship to the range of
Web-based technologies, we suggest that the Atom community propose to
do this work in the W3C.
W3C sees Atom as an important Web application and one that supports
the W3C mission to lead the Web to its full potential. The Atom group
has done wonderful work achieving a consensus in the community by
defining requirements and initiating the standardization process. We
know from previous experience and also from the current technical and
political climate, that the W3C process will give critical support and
review as a matter of course, which is needed to build a viable and
broadly adopted standard.
What might be the benefits for Atom?
- Strong promotion and deployment
Atom will benefit from W3C branding and deployment history. W3C's
experience in this area will make it easier for organizations and
communities to adopt and support this technology and further
facilitate the exchange of data on the Web. Atom stands a better
chance of success when it is part of an end-to-end strategy for
accessing information.
- Open participation and consensus
An Atom Working Group in the W3C could charter itself to operate in
the public, and invite participants who are not from W3C Member
organizations at the chair's prerogative. We recognize that much of
the work done on Atom has been by non-Members, and want to assure
those participants that they may take part fully in a W3C Atom Working
Group.
Generally, each participant identified as an individual entity or
company has a single vote. Decisions are made by consensus and will
give the possibility to respect the process that the Atom group has
been able to achieve. Participation in this regard is open to both W3C
Members and Invited Experts from the community.
- W3C Patent Policy: Royalty Free licensing
The process around working groups participation helps ensure
accountability and encourage Royalty Free licensing of the technology.
RF licensing in particular is an issue we've heard is important to the
syndication community. More information about this policy is available
at:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/
- I18n, Accessibility, Device Independence Support and Coordination
The Atom group will benefit from the expertise of these groups which
in turn will help ensure wide deployment regardless of device,
language, or ability. Further we expect the resolution of any
coordination issues arising from these groups will be resolved more
quickly at the W3C.
- XHTML Cooperation
It is important to understand the relationship between the Atom API
and the Atom document format. Specifically, we are concerned to
understand how these might evolve (independently or in-step) and
whether the API can be used with RDF formats such as RSS1, or W3C
hypertext formats (e.g. XHTML, or mixed-namespace content). Recent W3C
work (pre-draft at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/02/xhtml-rdf) on
XHTML2 and RDF is combining RDF's metadata approach with XHTML
document syntax, allowing paragraphs of text to be tagged with
information about their topic, source, author etc. We suspect further
discussions (perhaps a Workshop) are needed to fully understand how
the evolution of XHTML-based approaches relate to Atom and
blog-oriented systems. Since XHTML with embedded metadata can be used
to directly encode syndicated content, we believe the
interdependencies between the Atom API and Atom document format
deserve some attention, both in chartering the work (whether at W3C or
IETF) and as the work proceeds.
We believe the cooperation benefits to be great, and the coordination
cost will be addressed more quickly if this work happens at W3C.
- XML and RDF experience
W3C has years of expertise in definition of content format language
and model description. XML serialization and RDF model are areas of
expertise at the W3C. Though when it comes to a content model, the
organization is pretty agnostic (CSS, XML, RDF for example are
different models). The Atom group is the one defining its content
model and syntax.
Conversely, Atom would benefit from direct liaisons with these and
other W3C Working Groups to resolve potential conflicts and influence
future specifications.
- QA support
We have noticed that the Atom community already has a lot of early
implementation and that you have started a testing effort which is
already impressive. In the context of W3C, this will accelerate the
advancement of the Atom spec along the W3C Recommendation track. It's
great to see that a technology is already so mature with a well-built
quality process.
While we recognize the IETF submission, we'd like to hear from others
within the Atom community regarding the above points, and more
specifically, their requirements and objectives regarding taking this
to a standards organization. We'd support proposing a W3C Working
Group in this area, provided there is support from the larger Atom
community regarding the points mentioned above and that agreement
about work areas can be reached with the IETF.
--
eric miller http://www.w3.org/people/em/
semantic web activity lead http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
w3c world wide web consortium http://www.w3.org/