Re: Vote on the data race issue and Gecko shipping timeline

Hello all,

I understand your position. We have been blocked by this issue far too long
now, so I really think we need to come to a conclusion ASAP (regardless of
release schedules).

Thanks to both ROC and Jer for making such detailed and well documented
proposals. After several iterations, I think that they are both clear
enough to vote on right now.

I sincerely hope that we'll see an equally detailed proposal for the shared
data model that is our third option for the vote.

If nobody steps up to spec down the details of the shared memory model, one
solution could be that the vote option becomes just that (start specifying
the model), for instance (similar to an earlier proposal I've made):

"Keep the current API, using a shared data model. Specify the exact
behavior of the shared data model in the Web Audio specification to
guarantee client interoperability, and work together with other parties to
work out what other specifications need to be updated/written, etc."

This would be very unfortunate, though, since it's a very high risk option
(we can't know for sure that it will even succeed, and if not we'd be back
to square one), and it's definitely much less clear what that option means
compared to the other two options, both in terms of the actual work that
has to be done, and how long it would take to finish it.

Regards,

  Marcus




2013/8/9 Ehsan Akhgari <ehsan.akhgari@gmail.com>

> Hi everyone,
>
> Despite the efforts of everybody involved in the discussion so far (and I
> thank you all for doing so) it's still not clear when the vote on the data
> race issue is going to happen, and some of the proposals have not been
> precisely drafted yet.  In the Gecko land, we've already slipped by one
> release from our original ship schedule (Firefox 24) and we would like for
> that to not happen again.
>
> This decision is currently the last thing blocking us from shipping an
> unprefixed implementation of the Web Audio spec in Firefox 25, and we
> cannot block on it for an unknown period of time.  After some conversations
> at Mozilla, we've come to the conclusion that we should ship Web Audio in
> Firefox 25.  That said, we would really like to see the result of the vote
> before we ship so that we can change our implementation according to the
> decision of the Working Group if needed.  Firefox 25 is currently in the
> Aurora cycle and because of our release requirements we cannot accept big
> changes in the last couple of weeks of the Aurora cycle.  Therefore, we
> have until August 29th (three weeks from now) before we can change our
> implementation and test it.
>
> In the unfortunate event that the group has not come to a conclusion by
> that date, we are going to have to ship our current implementation, and try
> to find solutions for changing the implementation in the future according
> to the decision of the Working Group.
>
> Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Ehsan
> <http://ehsanakhgari.org/>
>