Language tags, the phillips draft, and procedures

[Misha Wolf]

An important point of which the IETF list members may not be aware is
that this work has been carried out as an informal IETF/W3C/Unicode 
collaboration.  For example:

-  Addison Phillips (co-author) is the Chair of the W3C I18N WG

-  Mark Davis (co-author) is the President of the Unicode Consortium

-  Martin Duerst, one of the participants in the debate, is the W3C 
   I18N Activity Lead

-  John Cowan is co-editor of the W3C's XML specification and XML 
   Information Set specification

-  Many of the participants in this work over the years have been 
   active in the W3C I18N effort and the Unicode Consortium and the 
   work of discussing the problems of RFC 1766 and later RFC 3066.

Furthermore:

-  The W3C is highly dependent on the RFC 1766/3066 family of RFCs, 
   as language-handling in HTML and XML is delegated to these RFCs.
   Within the W3C, the responsibility for keeping an eye on these 
   RFCs lies with the I18N WG.

-  The Unicode Consortium hosts the Common Locale Data Repository 
   (CLDR) Project, which has a close relationship to this work.

Now the IETF is, of course, free to do whatever it likes, but I 
would urge that any course of action which would cause a parting of 
the ways between the IETF and the W3C (and other Industry Consortia) 
should be avoided.  I suggest that it may be time to escalate this 
matter to the IETF/W3C Liaison group.

Misha Wolf
Standards Manager, Chief Architecture Office, Reuters
Founding Chair, W3C I18N WG




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