CG and CLA requirements

[plehegar]

This is a follow-up on w3c/charter-drafts#669.

Some IGs, like the WAI IG or the I18n IG or the Chinese Web IG, are simply mailing lists meant as discussion forums.

Transforming those into a community group isn't appealing due to the CLA requirements in those. Yet, the W3C Process is an overburden for those IGs due to the rechartering requirements.

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We do sympathize with the questions asked in issue 669 about whether a CG or IG is more appropriate, however it seems the least disruptive path for the moment is to continue with an IG, while leaving open the question of how do we enable the use of CGs more broadly for groups that want a discussion list (or similar resources) while explicitly disclaiming any deliverables or at least disclaiming any IP impacts.

We suggest that either issue 669 be opened to help drive this, or, perhaps the issue can be transferred (recreated?) into the W3C "Strategy" GitHub repo as a broader discussion topic beyond this one charter (we lean towards this latter option).

At a minimum it would be helpful to learn from the discussion in 669, and fix or improve CGs accordingly so that two years from now, all the obstacles have been removed to use a CG, either for this IG or similar IGs.
]]
https://www.w3.org/wbs/33280/wai-ig-2025/results/

[[
The discussion in 669 led to unconvincing justifications for rechartering this IG—that it was needed in order to operate a public mailing list, and that it might start doing more in the next 2 years. If those were the only purposes, this should be a Community Group, and we should concurrently work on 1) adjusting the CG structure so that it's possible to join certain CGs without signing a CLA, and 2) making it easier to reopen groups so that we don't need to recharter them just to leave space for speculative future work.

However, accessibility is a key activity of the W3C. There are 3 chartered Working Groups in the area, which is enough for W3C insiders to do the necessary concrete specification work. However, as the IG's charter says, these aren't always approachable for people and organizations that aren't already familiar with the W3C. In a less key area, a Community Group would be an appropriate "welcome mat" for non-W3C people. Keeping this kind of purpose out of Interest Groups reduces the load on the AC to review charters. But for accessibility in particular, it's worth having the W3C membership re-endorse that this is a particularly important area for the W3C. Thus, after reflection, we support this charter.
]]
https://www.w3.org/wbs/33280/wai-ig-2025/results/

[ianbjacobs]

@plehegar, we have spoken at length in the past about a "copyright-only" CG that is not allowed to produce specifications. Such CGs could be discussion groups and even publish non-Specifications.

Here are some notes from a previous discussion about copyright-only CGs.

We never prioritized implementing this.

[ianbjacobs]

There's a related issue on copyrights and CGs in the CG Council

[ianbjacobs]

@plehegar, here's what we do today to accommodate participation in CGs that do not publish specifications:

• We mark them as not publishing specifications in the W3C database.
• W3C Members still join via their AC rep (which is what AC reps want).
• They still sign the usual CLA (which has a copyright component) but they have no patent commitments because there are no specifications involved. But we still ask them to sign the CLA, which is suboptimal. This is why we wanted copyright-only groups.
• Employers of non-Members join (automatically) as individuals. They still sign the same CLA (but again, not a big burden in practice, but suboptimal).