At 02:22 PM 4/20/2007 -0400, David Dailey wrote:
This made me wonder something:
Maciej has written
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0911.html
concerning the proposed principles that
>You can think of them as self-imposed amendments to the charter, so
>that we don't have to pick through the often vague language of the
>charter for justification. Since they are self-imposed, they are also
>less difficult to add or remove in response to feedback. All it takes
>is a decision of the group, not the full re-chartering process which
>is slow and disruptive.
Has a W3C group ever modified its own charter in this way? If so was it
done by majority rule?
I am not sure Maciej was being literal or not, but I did not interpret his
suggestion
as being an actual amendment to the charter as much as a virtual amendment.
The XML Schema WG adopted a set of design principles as did the XML WG.
If there is a minority which opposes such a modification of a charter,
then it would seem that consensus has not been achieved and that an
official rechartering might be required. Maybe not. I suspect Karl may
know of precedents.
Re-chartering is a rat hole that I don't want to go anywhere near. It is
almost a miracle
that we have this WG at all. Let's try hard to keep it together and not
seek any more
ways to tear it apart.
Or perhaps in some meta WG that oversees the specifications of charters,
there may be language that covers exactly this situation and that a
majority may, as it wishes, change things in this way. In the US, I think
one needs a 2/3 majority to change the constitution, plus some sort of
state-by-state referendum.
Regards,
Murray
