Re: Why not AS2? was Re: Getting the group back on track

Sandro Hawke writes:

> On 10/16/2015 09:34 AM, Christopher Allan Webber wrote:
>> This is great news.  So that's MediaGoblin, Diaspora, Pump.IO,
>> Friendica, the Clojure stuff from Thoughtworks, IBM's project (I'm
>> forgetful of the name), and from my conversations off-list, quite
>> possibly OwnCloud.  It looks like the willingness to implement AS2 is
>> fairly strong in those groups.
>>
>> I agree with you that the serialization format is hardly the only
>> critical point to be discuss, but figuring out at least that is a
>> requirement to move forward on nailing down other things.
>>
>> Here's where this group is frequently stuck now: http://shed.bike/
>>
>> Again, we have to agree on a format before we move forwards on other
>> things.  It may as well be our deliverable.
>>
>> Kevin Marks raised in the last meeting that there seems to be a
>> disagreement about whether or not this group is to build something
>> prescriptive and defining a standard, or evaluatory and summing the
>> state of the field.  I agree that there's disagreement over this!  We've
>> already done a lot of the latter, summing the state of the world and
>> doing evaluation; I want to use that information to move on to actually
>> building something people can implement.  That requires making
>> decisions.
>>
>> <kevinmarks> cwebber2: I found this quote that sums up well what I am getting
>>               at: https://kindle.amazon.com/post/HLglK_6oRhOnsiQSo829eg
>>
>> So, it's true that things change over time, and wikis are great, but we
>> already have wikis that are discussing these things.  I don't think we
>> need a group at the w3c to continue a wiki process that is already
>> working well outside it.
>>
>> I want to define a standard, and move forward with it.  I'm burning
>> resources to spend on this, and that burn time will run out if we can't
>> move ahead.
>>
>> I may have raised things poorly in the last meeting by suggesting that
>> we agree on ActivityStreams as a MUST requirement.  How about a SHOULD?
>>
>> If we agree on SHOULD, at least, we can move forward.
>>
>> If this group can't agree on "SHOULD" of its own standard, something is
>> totally bonkers here.
>
> I understand proposing SHOULD as a compromise, but let's push a little 
> more on MUST, first, and see if we can deeply understanding what's 
> motivating the -1's.
>
> Trying to think about what's going to maximize utility in the industry, 
> and help the people who want AS2 to succeed, it's not clear to me in 
> picking between two bad options whether it would be better to go with a 
> SHOULD or go with a MUST over formal objections from several people.
>
> It depends a lot what motivates those -1's, I think.
>
> When one puts a SHOULD in a spec, I think one should be clear about at 
> least some of the reasons one might have for going against that 
> recommendation.   Can someone name a reason they'd have for not 
> implementing AS2 in the kind of software that might implement AS2?
>
>        -- Sandro

Thanks Sandro, I agree that understanding why we got these -1s in the
first place would be helpful.

Received on Saturday, 17 October 2015 14:46:43 UTC