Standards/Participating in TC39

Ways to participate

TC39 and it's associated task groups have a defined membership: people can become a delegate by being nominated by a member organization, or being invited by the chairs of the group (an invited expert), or by being an ECMA staff member placed in the group by ECMA.

Much of the technical discussion takes place on GitHub, which means that non-members can participate in the technical decisions by creating and commenting on issues for the individual proposals hosted there.

A week prior to each TC39 plenary meeting the SpiderMonkey team hosts a proposal review meeting that is open to Mozilla employees and contributors who have signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement. In this meeting, we discuss each proposal on the agenda for the upcoming meeting and come to agreement on the the SpiderMonkey team's position on the proposal. If you have an opinion on an individual proposal, or would like to participate in this meeting, please contact Yulia Startsev or Daniel Minor to discuss the proposal or for an invitation to this meeting.

Beyond the TC39 plenaries, there are other meetings that may be of interest. The TC39 chair group is working on developing a calendar for meetings that are open to the public. Of particular potential interest to Mozillians is the monthly TG2 meeting that discusses internationalization and works on the ECMA-402 standard. Please contact Daniel Minor for more information about attending this meeting as an observer. TG2 is less formal than the TC39 plenary, and questions and comments from non-delegates are generally welcome.

If after attending a TC39 plenary or two as an observer, you would like to become a delegate for Mozilla, please start a conversation with Yulia or Daniel. Having perspectives and expertise from outside the SpiderMonkey team is very valuable, but at the same time, we need to be careful that delegates from other organizations know who is speaking as an individual and who is representing the position of SpiderMonkey or Mozilla.

Suggestions for participation

• In most cases you should be representing your own opinion and not the position of SpiderMonkey or Mozilla. Only positions that have been agreed to at the proposal review meeting should be represented as the position of the SpiderMonkey team, and we should not speak for Mozilla as a whole without feedback from the broader group of people interested in standards at Mozilla.
• If asked for an opinion on something, it's perfectly fine to say you need to ask someone with more expertise or that you need time to formulate an opinion, and you will return with more information later.
• Keep in mind that we are balancing three separate (and potentially conflicting) concerns when considering a proposal:
  • The cost/feasibility of creating an implementation in SpiderMonkey with good performance
  • The needs and wants of web developers
  • What is good for users of the Internet as a whole
• As implementers of a JavaScript engine, we should use our voice carefully and avoid being drawn into heated debates. Sometimes it's best to say nothing at all.