Re: Should the specs be forked and maintained elsewhere?

Thanks Pierre, I'll follow up with you off-thread about permissions and
editorial clarifications based on our existing set of errata.

On Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 11:36 AM Pierre-Antoine Champin <pierre-antoine@w3.org>
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> chiming in as an ActivityPub enthusiast and as a member of the W3C team,
>
> I agree that regular meetings would be a good idea, but I don't think the
> specs necessarily need to be forked to be maintained, even though they're
> in TR status and don't see active updates.
>
> As a matter of fact, the W3C process has evolved in the past year, in
> order to allow a spec to be updated (under certain limits) without the
> existence of a working group:
>
> https://beta.w3.org/2021/Process-20211102/#revised-rec-editorial
> (see 2nd paragraph, "If there is no working group...)
>
> What it means is that you (the SocialCG) can definitely propose editorial
> changes to the existing specs, and reach out to a team member (as myself)
> to get the recommendation updated.
>
> This can only cover non-substansive changes, i.e. typos, clarifications...
> but nothing that would require implementers to change their code. In the
> case where technical issues have been detected, however, it is still
> possible to include notes about them, and pointers to proposed solutions
> (that would only be informative at this point, but at least would be
> visible to anyone reading the updated spec).
>
> The Community Group being the successor of the Working Group, I believe
> that we can arrange for providing permissions on the relevant github
> repositories (https://github.com/w3c/activitystreams and
> https://github.com/w3c/activitypub) so that you can triage and clean up
> issues as you see fit.
>
> Finally, if the CG feels like a new version of ActivityPub is required
> (including substantive changes), we can also discuss the chartering of a
> new Working Group to take up this task.
>
> It's great to see this group active and motivated! If you start having
> regular meetings again, I can't commit to follow them all, but I'm more
> than happy to try and join every now and then, and discuss those
> opportunities with you.
>
>   pa
>
>  Very few suggestions have
> been made about actual practical improvements to the spec—the vast, vast
> majority of open Github issues are usage questions that have been
> addressed. Regarding the FEP process, while it has generated a lot of
> productive discussion, it's less clear to me that it's been effective at
> generating multi-implementor consensus, which is in my mind the most
> important goal of a specification workgroup. I'm not aware of any currently
> active FEP that got discussion from multiple implementers and then went on
> to have multiple interoperable implementations.
>
> Previously, the Community Group spent a lot of effort discussing and
> working on "outreach"-focused initiatives that didn't move the ball forward
> on technical integration. I think that's also a serious mistake that we
> made in the past that we should learn from going forward. To my mind, what
> we need to call a meeting is a concrete agenda of technical topics and an
> actionable plan on *what* implementers or organizations are going to put in
> the work to explore them or move them forward. We can't move forward as a
> specification body without implementer buy-in and consensus.
>
> I'm aware of implementer interest from Mastodon relevant to a few of the
> topics I can see discussing: Reply approval, Groups. What other specific
> technical topics do people feel like should end up on the agenda?
>
> On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 6:56 PM Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name <evan@prodromou.name?Subject=Re%3A%20Should%20the%20specs%20be%20forked%20and%20maintained%20elsewhere%3F&In-Reply-To=%3CCAJY4u8Ed1NuNXBn9D_t%2BkDWJAgpg1USMPpr348wEc%3DJksQ34pA%40mail.gmail.com%3E&References=%3CCAJY4u8Ed1NuNXBn9D_t%2BkDWJAgpg1USMPpr348wEc%3DJksQ34pA%40mail.gmail.com%3E>> wrote:
>
> > Regular meetings would be great.
> >
> > On Mar 21, 2023, at 5:25 PM, Bob Wyman <bob@wyman.us <bob@wyman.us?Subject=Re%3A%20Should%20the%20specs%20be%20forked%20and%20maintained%20elsewhere%3F&In-Reply-To=%3CCAJY4u8Ed1NuNXBn9D_t%2BkDWJAgpg1USMPpr348wEc%3DJksQ34pA%40mail.gmail.com%3E&References=%3CCAJY4u8Ed1NuNXBn9D_t%2BkDWJAgpg1USMPpr348wEc%3DJksQ34pA%40mail.gmail.com%3E>> 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.
> >
> > 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?
> >
> > 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?
> >
> > bob wyman
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>