Via w3c/process#948

Following #1786, Pubrules checks that editors listed under "Editors" participate in the Working Group to meet the Process requirement that "An editor must be a participant". That check assumes that the notion of editors in the Process equates the "Editors" label in the spec. In practice, groups may want to preserve a person who no longer edits a spec in the "Editors" list, e.g., because they feel that the "Former editors" list devalues the editor's status.

Conclusion from the Process issue discussion is that this is not a Process issue, and up to Pubrules. I propose to relax the check in Pubrules to allow groups to mix current and former editors under "Editors" (as we used to do).

For copyright and IPR reasons, it still seems important to identify active editors at the time of publication and make sure that they are in the group. Check in Pubrules could skip entries in the "Editors" list that have a former class. To make sure that the spec conveys the information to readers, that check could perhaps be fine-tuned to: skip entries in the "Editors" list that have a non-empty <span class="former"> next to the editor's name. This would allow things like Edith Orre <span class="former">(until September 2025)</span>, but would prevent <span class="former">Edith Orre</span> as it does not convey any information to readers.