> On May 13, 2016, at 10:02 PM, Bob Myers <[email protected]> wrote: > > This entire process is quite unfriendly to grassroots proposals and I hope it > can be tweaked. > > > All proposals that are officially considered by TC39 have to have been > > submitted in conformance with the Ecma IPR policies including the RF patent > > policy and the software copyright policy. > > Is putting a proposal into the stage 0 list, so people can see it, considered > to be "officially considered by TC39"? There is already a mechanism in place > (registration) for anyone to agree to the IPR policies.
Yes. More generally anything that is hosted within the TC39 github site (with the exception of issues and pending pull requests) is a contribution subject to the IPR policies. In order for a pull request to be accepted it has to conform to the policies. > > > A TC39 member champion is necessary for a proposal in order to get items on > > meeting agendas and to lead meeting discussions relating to the proposal. > > Fine, but before we get to meetings and agendas we are talking about just > putting a proposal on the list of stage 0 proposals so it's on the radar. > > The CONTRIBUTING.md file you reference explicitly states (my emphasis): > > > Ecma TC39 accepts contributions from non-member individuals who have > > accepted the TC39 copyright and patent policies. > > This seems to be in conflict with what I understand you are saying. Is it > wrong? If so, can someone fix it? > > But then later in the document it says > > > convince others that your proposal is a useful addition to the language and > > recruit TC39 members > > and > > > If you have a new proposal you want to get into the language, you first > > need a TC39 champion There are two things at play here: conforming to the Ecma IPR policies and actual advancing a proposal through the TC39 process stages. 1) For a proposal (or any document) to be officially considered by TC39 it must be present (and archived) as a “contribution” that conforms to the IPR policy. 2) There needs to be somebody who is a TC39 member delegate who is willing manage the proposal through the TC39 process. That is the “champion”. Without champion it won’t even get on a meeting agenda. > > Is there a distinction here between a "contribution" and a "proposal”? A proposal is a kind of contribution. Basically anything document submitted to TC39 is a contribution. > > Then in https://tc39.github.io/process-document/ > <https://tc39.github.io/process-document/>, it says that there is a > "strawman" stage 0 and lists the "Entrance Requirements" as "none". In the > same document, it says > > > Ideas for evolving the ECMAScript language are accepted in any form. Any > > discussion, idea or proposal for a change or addition which has not been > > submitted as a formal proposal is considered to be a “strawman” (stage 0) > > and has no acceptance requirements. Such submissions must either come from > > members of TC39 or from non-members who have registered via Ecma > > International. > > Is this incorrect? If so, it should be fixed. I believe I wrote those words… The “none” is incorrect, to the extent that the stage 0 proposal must be a contribution conforming to the IPR policies. Note that a slide deck presented by a member delegate at a TC39 meeting automatically meets that criteria, so from a member’s perspective there are essentially no “Entrance Requirements”. Non-members can submit a proposal via the registration process. There is currently no guarantee that anyone involved with TC39 is going to pay any attention to it. That’s where the need to recruit a champion comes in. The original thinking when the TC39 process was being drafted was that non-member “proposals" would be discussed on es-discuss or other public forums that are followed by TC39 participants. The expectations is that interesting proposals and good ideas would be noticed and championed by TC39 participants. (Historically, a number of ideas incorporated into the ECMAScript specifications have originated within es-discuss threads) > > > I agree that TC39 could do a better job at providing an in-take process. > > For example, it could have a “Request for consideration” channel and a > > regular agenda item to solicit members who may have an interest in > > championing such requests. But setting that up requires some TC39 member(s) > > who are interested in championing that process change and managing it > > going forward. > > Hmmm, a champion for a process to find champions? One idea that springs to > mind is to have a forward-looking TC39 member agree to serve as interim > champion for grassroots proposals from non-insiders, although they would need > to be able to reject extremely poor proposals. Yup, there is a meta level to TC39. Yes, something like that was what I was thinking. > > By the way, the current stage 0 list at > https://github.com/tc39/proposals/blob/master/stage-0-proposals.md > <https://github.com/tc39/proposals/blob/master/stage-0-proposals.md> starts > off by saying that "Stage 0 proposals have been presented to the committee", > but then includes proposals with the rocket ship icon which are "as not yet > presented to the committee". Which is it? Are stage 0 proposals supposed to > be presented to the committee to acquire that status, or not, or it varies? > It's also worth noting that a number of these stage 0 proposals are very old, > and/or their docs indicate they have been superseded, or in one case have no > link to anything, Is there any process for removing things from the stage 0 > list? These are collective ownership issues. There isn’t a single “editor” of all this TC39 web content. Another meta-level issue for TC39. But thanks for your concern. Really! Allen
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