Re: Efforts towards creating a Working Group

My two cents:

If we are to make the API more RESTful, then I think that should be done
first, before moving to a WG and starting to make Recommendations. I for
one would hesitate to endorse a Recommendation that so obviously
deviates from current REST API best practice. But whether to do this
modernization (and to what extent!) is something that the group must
decide. I think this is an important decision and ideally would be taken
soon, because it affects a lot of other things, including the possible
migration to a WG.

Implementing an reconciliation endpoint for Annif [1] is still pretty
high on my todo list, but I would like to do this based on a modern spec
(preferably with an available OpenAPI profile!) and not a legacy spec
that is going away soon. But it doesn't make sense to do this work
unless there is some momentum behind the new spec, including having
OpenRefine support it in a reasonable timeframe.

So if we were to decide to modernize the API, then I could at least
provide one (or perhaps two - Skosmos [2] could use one as well!)
implementation of the new spec to support the migration to a WG and
making the spec into a Recommendation.

-Osma

[1] https://github.com/NatLibFi/Annif/issues/338

[2] https://github.com/NatLibFi/Skosmos/issues/23

Antonin Delpeuch kirjoitti 21.6.2022 klo 14.47:
> Hello all,
> 
> I wanted to make it visible that we have a project of migrating from our
> current Community Group (CG) to a W3C Working Group (WG). This is a more
> officially W3C-endorsed structure which has the powers to publish
> recommendations (i.e. sorts of standards). This would give more
> visibility to the protocol, and probably foster its adoption on the long
> run.
> 
> Creating a Working Group is a bit more involved than a Community Group.
> The summary of what we need for this can be found as "todo" items in our
> draft charter for the WG:
> https://reconciliation-api.github.io/charter/working_group_charter.html
> 
> In particular, I draw your attention to the following points:
> 
> - we need some concrete time commitment from one or a few organizers for
> the working group (which might require coordination with our respective
> organizations - or even funding applications?). Typically, looking at
> other working groups, there is a lead committing to some percentage of a
> Full-Time Equivalent (sometimes as little as 0.01 FTE) and other members
> committing to be active in discussions. Who would be motivated to play a
> role in this?
> 
> - unlike a CG which can run indefinitely, a WG has a fixed term during
> which it should produce its outcomes. We are also asked to come up with
> a timeline of our deliverables and other milestones. Therefore, once he
> WG starts we need to be relatively quick to publish our specs
> officially. On my side, I am wondering at which stage of maturity for
> the specs we want to be at, when migrating to a WG. In particular, I
> opened a discussion some weeks ago about changing the API to make it
> more compatible with REST principles: if we go ahead with this proposal,
> I suspect it would be useful to have already written up (and ideally
> adopted, in a few systems) such new specs before migrating to a WG. What
> do you think?
> 
> - to move our specs to a "Proposed Recommendation", we need to
> demonstrate a few implementations of it, so it could be useful to have
> an idea of who could commit to implementing the latest specs on their
> side (as a reconciliation service or client) as part of this effort.
> 
> Also, because we have many organizations represented in this group, I
> wonder if this migration to a WG would be a good opportunity to apply
> for some network funding for this. I have the feeling that we could be
> quite convincing (with our activity as a CG so far, our many different
> implementations), and it should be doable to work as a group since we
> have relatively clear separations of responsibilities from the start
> (each organization implements the API in its own context).
> 
> I am very interested to read what you think of all this!
> 
> Antonin
> 
> 

-- 
Osma Suominen
D.Sc. (Tech), Information Systems Specialist
National Library of Finland
P.O. Box 15 (Unioninkatu 36)
00014 HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Tel. +358 50 3199529
osma.suominen@helsinki.fi
http://www.nationallibrary.fi

Received on Tuesday, 21 June 2022 13:53:59 UTC