RE: On babies and bathwater (was Re: [rtcweb] Summary of Application Developers' opinions of the current WebRTC API and SDP as a control surface)

I sure hope that Peter and folks with similar sentiment don’t *actually* think that the WG is requiring them to “wait until 2.0” to have these issues addressed.

Among other things, if the first version can’t be implemented, it won’t be a standard… so it would be a shame to have not started on the correct API.

I suppose if the WG chairs are really this inflexible to the membership of the WG, we can always start a new WG and get new chairs for it.

Matthew Kaufman

From: Peter Thatcher [mailto:pthatcher@google.com]
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2013 12:29 PM
To: cowwoc
Cc: public-webrtc@w3.org
Subject: Re: On babies and bathwater (was Re: [rtcweb] Summary of Application Developers' opinions of the current WebRTC API and SDP as a control surface)



On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:15 PM, cowwoc <cowwoc@bbs.darktech.org<mailto:cowwoc@bbs.darktech.org>> wrote:
On 19/07/2013 3:06 PM, Adam Roach wrote:
On 7/19/13 13:47, Peter Thatcher wrote:
I think this is the real issue at hand: You value legacy interop more than a usable API.

This. *This* is why I've told you that you're misunderstanding everything. Don't take offense, just go back and read more carefully. I never said anything that implied that legacy interop is more valuable than a usable API. It's a nice strawman for you to build up and tear down, but you are arguing with a fictional character who is not me when you do so.

What I'm trying to point out is that these goals are not at odds with each other. Your statement above implies that you have taken it as given that we can't do both -- that there is a tradeoff here to be made. If you take that as a fundamental principle, then I can see how nothing I say makes any sense.

But they're not mutually exclusive goals. Keep that in mind, and go back to re-read what I've written.

    I think what Adam is trying to say is: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html


    Adam, I would argue that we can improve the API incrementally without throwing out all the lessons we've learned to date *but* this means you have to be open to change.


Ironically, the thing that seems to have gotten the whole SDP discussion reignited was that I proposed the "NoPlan JS API", which was a completely incremental, additive approach to improving the API.  So, I'm totally in favor of an incremental approach to improving the API.  But, when I proposed it, I got three big pieces of feedback:

1.  The anti-SDP crowd said, basically, "We don't like it because there's still too much SDP;  Remove more".
2.  The pro-SDP crowd said, basically, "We don't like it because this isn't SDP Offer/Answer;  Don't change so much".
3.  The WG leaders said, basically, "let's finish the current API before we change anything major".

My hope is that 2.0 will be able to make everyone happy.
It's not okay to use this as a club to silence calls for change, which frankly is what we've been hearing for a while: "Sit tight while we finish 1.0... it's just around the corner. Let's not discuss any changes until we get this out the door."

FYI, Adam just said we're "nowhere near finished yet".



Gili