Re: Should the specs be forked and maintained elsewhere?

On Tue, 21 Mar 2023 at 21:45, Jacky Alcine <yo@jacky.wtf> wrote:

> On Tue, 2023-03-21 at 17:25 -0400, Bob Wyman wrote:
>
> I've seen several suggestions that, due to inactivity in this group, it
> would make sense to fork either or both of the ActivityStreams and
> ActivityPub specs with the intent to develop them further and maintain them
> elsewhere. The most recent suggestion
> <https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/should-we-fork-as-ap-specs-to-codeberg-create-vnext-drafts/3022>
> that I've seen was made in one of the forums on the ActivityRocks site.
>
>
> (With the pre-text of my two answers below), moving it to the forum
> wouldn't be the *sole answer*. We'd need a place to hold the revisions of
> said standards. Does the forum (or the organization behind it) have the
> capacity to do so? How would such a standards body operate with the W3C?
>

I think we should be able to fork them and make mods which can be discussed
at meetings then a separate vote can be made in an .md file where people
add their names and reasons for or against or show stoppers. Before pull
requests can be made there should be at least full OWL Turtle definitions
with the spec extensions and also ideally a working implementation or even
ideally two as well.


> My personal feeling is that the proper forum for maintenance of these W3C
> specs is within this community. Am I correct? However, I sympathize with
> others who feel that maintenance is simply not happening. There are now 55
> open issues <https://github.com/w3c/activitypub/issues> on ActivityPub's
> GitHub repository and 58 open issues
> <https://github.com/w3c/activitystreams/issues> on the ActivityStreams
> repository. Who is responsible for addressing those issues, closing them,
> or taking action on them? What is the process by which these decisions will
> be made?
>
>
> Who has the "commit bit" to that repository?
> https://github.com/w3c/activitystreams/graphs/contributors points to a
> list of people who've contributed to it - are any of them in here and are
> willing to take a more active role in doing so (and if not, relinquishing
> that to someone else)?
>

Yes we will need commit access for pull requests ideally to a
'v3-prelimanary' branch or other named branch or branches from members of
the repos. Ideally nothing should be committed to v3 before we have working
implementations. And have full OWL Turtle definitions as well.

>
> Other W3C groups that I've worked with have regular Zoom or Jitsi meetings
> to discuss issues. Why doesn't this group ever have such meetings?
>
>
> IIRC those meetings are either opted by volunteer efforts or by the chairs
> of the community. If we want that, all that needs to be done is for someone
> to propose some days, another to take minutes and another to faciliate such
> meetings with agendas.
>
> That's the how. The "why" can be .... social.
>

We need at least two hour meetings, one hour meetings are never long enough
and theres always overrun and someone who has not had a chance to get their
time.


>
> bob wyman
>
>
Many thanks Bob for raising this !

Regards,

Aaron


-- 
Aaron Gray

Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher,
Information Theorist, and Computer Scientist.