Industry

[mnot]

Ensure that standards are developed with consensus of industry and key stakeholders

What is "industry" in this context -- in particular, what market(s) does it encompass?

One view would be "web browsers / web browser engines". Another would be "any corporate entity that ponies up to the table with cash."

This is going to be a critical factor in many upcoming decisions -- we need to speak very carefully here.

[cwilso]

The intent was to capture that we should not be inventing standards without the support of relevant stakeholders; it was certainly not to focus on "web browsers" "engine implementers" or another limited class, nor to limit to those who show up with Membership cash either.

(I would welcome better, more focused wording suggestions here; the goal was to be inclusive, not limit the consensus we were looking for.)

[mnot]

I was thinking more along the lines of whether 'industry' includes e.g., the web advertising industry? The parts of industry that believe the best way to secure the Internet is to get in the middle of connections, and/or sniff DNS? Countries who want to use the web to monitor their citizens engage with industry to enable that -- how about them? If so, how do you judge consensus (keeping in mind that this is part of the top-level vision)?

Industry being called out separately also begs the question of why parties like civil society, government, etc., were not mentioned.

Another way to ask this is 'who are the key stakeholders' and, more importantly, who are not?

These are pretty deep waters -- mostly because 'consensus' is mentioned, which ties this statement to decision-making. The simplest fix is to dodge that (e.g., "Ensure that standard are developed with input from...").

However, given the way things look like they're going, I'd argue for something more courageous, like:

Ensure that standards are developed with input from industry, end users, civil society, and other affected parties, forming consensus that is shaped by commonly held principles [ref to ethical web principles] and implemented broadly (e.g., by web browsers).

I do think the W3C should more formally acknowledge the special place that browsers have, but that's probably another discussion.

[jwrosewell]

The web has had a phenomenal impact on commerce, which might be considered a synonym for industry. The web supports markets worth multiple hundreds of billions of dollars per annum, where some market participants enjoy trillion dollar plus market capitalization. Many web stakeholders would recognize the role the web plays in commerce. The majority of W3C members participate in one or more markets enabled by the web, and would not exist if it were not for those markets.

Therefore I would like to see commerce added to the second bullet point of the identity section, and emphasis more broadly to reflect this reality.

[cwilso]

@jwrosewell I don't see how commerce could be added to the second bullet of the identity section; that bullet lists horizontal values we hold dear (accessibility, internationalization, privacy, security and diversity), not clientele. (I would not consider commerce and industry identical, to the point where I would choose carefully in context which to use; but I'm not sure that's relevant.) do you want to make a wording suggestion? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. This is likely a separate point from @mnot's original filing, though?

@mnot I think what would address your concern is likely specifying key stakeholders and industries. Is that an appropriate recast of this issue?

[mnot]

Listing stakeholders and industries is likely to either precipitate a bunfight, or to be so vague as to not be helpful.

As I said, I think it's critical to separate who gives input from how consensus is determined; we might be fuzzy about it now, but hopefully that will crisp up over time. I made two suggestions above, i think either is workable.

[dwsinger]

I think what "industry" means in the context of this bullet is no more or less than "the organizations who would need to implement or deploy a specification for it to be successful", so your example of browser engines is a major part of the industry needed for an HTML feature, for sure. But for example, when we embarked on web payments, we made a lot of effort to get members of the finance industry at the table. I don't think we can or need to expand here.