Refining joint deliverables guidance when a non-WG group is involved

[plehegar]

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@frivoal also mentions that we'll need to handle additional cases of group coordination:

• what happens if one of the Groups is the TAG?
• what happens if one of the Groups is a CG?

I think that the answer is if/when we do such things, we're bound by the charter of the WG, since that's the only Group that's actually allowed to publish things on the REC track. Participants beyond the WG (TAG members, CG members, what have you) will need to abide by https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20230612/#contributor-license to make contributions
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From w3c/process#754 (comment)

[anssiko]

Thanks @frivoal for raising this issue.

As a WG chair I've had a few cases where a non-participant has proposed a substantive contribution to a WG's deliverable and in follow-ups clearly signalled is not in a position to join the WG.

One such case we resolved using https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20230612/#contributor-license while in another similar situation this mechanism did not work out for the contributor for undisclosed reasons. So in my experience "License Grants from Non-Participants" did work 50% of the time.

I think it would be helpful to provide guidance to WG chairs on how to resolve such issues and having a Guide pointer would be great with an understanding we may not be able to solve all such issues.

I trust @plehegar and @frivoal are able to come up with a good text for the Guide that we can improve over time as we learn more.

[frivoal]

So in my experience "License Grants from Non-Participants" did work 50% of the time.

Alternatively, we could say that 100% of the time, it did ensure that we did not end up with patent encumbered stuff in our spec :)

But +1 to having some guidance about that in the Guide.