Re: Call for comments: New charter for WebRTC Working Group

On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>
wrote:

> Personal opinions......
>
> On 01/18/2015 04:38 PM, Cullen Jennings (fluffy) wrote:
> > This WG is woefully behind on every milestone and many people would
> argue is biting off far more than it can chew.
>
> I would put this a bit differently - the WG has proved very bad at
> estimating when it could finish the work it has taken on. At multiple
> times people (including me) have said things like "we have to finish
> this by time X otherwise we will be too late", and tried to plan
> accordingly. In hindsight, that was a mistake.
>
> > Once the discussion of 1.1 starts happing I believe it will overwhelm
> many other things including any ongoing work on 1.0. For that reason I
> dont' believe we should start the low level / object oriented API
> discussions until after we have WebRTC 1.0 complete.
>
> Substantially agree, but with one important proviso:
>
> Discussion of 1.1 WILL happen - in fact it IS happening. The only thing
> we can try to influence is the forum and the formal status - not whether
> or not it is happening.
>
> >
> > Specifically I would like the text in
> >
> >  The working group will, once  WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication
> Between Browsers  is considered stable enough, consider working on a new
> set of APIsfor real-time communication.
> >
> > changed to
> >
> >  The working group will, once  WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication
> Between Browsers  is finished (at CR), the consider working on a new set of
> low level object oriented APIs for real-time communication.
>
> The wording was chosen to give ourselves wiggle room to "do what's right".
>
> I have never taken an API spec from PR to CR, so I have very little
> insight in how much of the time spent there is actual work that should
> be blocking other things, and how much is "waiting for someone to cross
> the last T".
>
> I'd like to hear comments from others on whether "considered stable
> enough" or "finished (at CR)" is the more reasonable milestone for "the
> WG will try to encompass the 1.1 work".


I would prefer to have a concrete milestone, not a promise to make an
assessment.

I would be willing to listen to arguments about whether PR, CR, etc. are
the right
milestones.


>
>
>
> > The second issue is all the documents that are joint work with with the
> DeviceWG. Having theses as joint work substantial complicates the issues of
> resolving issues near the end the draft.  It's not even really clear what
> would happen if the two WG had conflicting views on how to resolve an issue
> in the draft. Because of this I do not think theses should be spread across
> two WG unless there is a specific reason to do so. I know that the reasons
> we originally did this have changed - both Microsoft and qualcom and listed
> on the webrtc members page thought I don't know their actual status - so it
> is not clear we should follow the same path with new specifications.
>
> So far, we have not encountered this problem.
>
> If splitting the work into two fora makes sense at all, I see no reason
> to change our current setup - and if we have two fora, the document
> split we have seems to make sense for those fora.
>
>
I agree with Cullen that it would be better to just have one WG.

-Ekr


> >
> >
> > Thanks, Cullen
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Jan 15, 2015, at 3:36 AM, Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear Working Group participants,
> >>
> >> As you may know, the charter of the WebRTC Working Group is expiring at
> >> the end of next month (February 2015), after having been extended for
> >> two years in February 2013.
> >>
> >> The Working Group chairs feel that the group’s charter should be renewed
> >> rather than just extended this time around. Renewing it means we can
> >> change the text of the charter to make it reflect more accurately our
> >> current work, and gives a chance to W3C Members to review that work 4
> >> years after it initially started. It is also an opportunity to list
> >> explicit new directions the work might go into.
> >>
> >> The chairs and staff contact have thus developed a new draft charter for
> >> the group:
> >> http://w3c.github.io/webrtc-charter/webrtc-charter.html
> >>
> >> The changes it brings to the charter compared to our current charter can
> >> be reviewed via the commits made on github:
> >> https://github.com/w3c/webrtc-charter/commits/gh-pages
> >>
> >> or through the diff between the two documents:
> >>
> >>
> http://services.w3.org/htmldiff?doc1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2011%2F04%2Fwebrtc-charter.html&doc2=http%3A%2F%2Fw3c.github.io%2Fwebrtc-charter%2Fwebrtc-charter.html
> >>
> >> At a high level, these changes consist of:
> >> * making our current list of deliverables explicit and assign estimated
> >> dates of their progress on the Recommendation track
> >> * adding a mention of a WebRTC Next Generation API
> >> * updating the list of dependencies to other groups from which we will
> >> be seeking reviews of our work
> >>
> >> Given that our current charter expires at the end of February, and given
> >> the required time to renew a charter (which includes review by the W3C
> >> management followed by a review by the W3C Advisory Committee), we would
> >> like to proceed with the renewal process as soon as possible.
> >>
> >> As such, and unless a WG participant requires more time, we would like
> >> to ask for review and comments before end of next week (January 23rd).
> >>
> >> Given that the charter is on github, suggestions of changes as pull
> >> requests would be welcomed; except for minor editorial corrections,
> >> these suggestions need to be brought to this list for discussion to
> >> ensure all the group participants are aware of potential additional
> changes.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> Harald & Stefan as Chairs
> >>
> >> --
> >> Surveillance is pervasive. Go Dark.
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>
> --
> Surveillance is pervasive. Go Dark.
>
>
>
>