Re: Split off ActivityPub CG or WG

+1

On 10/10/2023 09:21, Pierre-Antoine Champin wrote:
 > Would it make sense to start by creating an Activity Pub Maintenance 
WG for
 > maintaining AS2 and AP? Nothing would prevent this group from 
requesting a
 > rechartering at some point to start working on ActivityPub2, whenever 
they and
 > the CG find it is timely.

+1

On 01/10/2023 20:42, Christine Lemmer-Webber wrote:
 > I think if a re-invigorated set of ActivityPub work is to happen, do 
it in a
 > new group devoted to that *explicit* purpose. ... the SocialWG worked 
pretty
 > well BECAUSE it was full of invited experts.  But that was heavily 
frowned upon
 > by the W3C at the time.  If a WG were to happen, get buy-in to that 
idea up
 > front.

If "requesting a recharter" 6 or 9 months down the road is an accepted 
path within normal W3C process, I would be +1 to starting with an 
maintenance-only charter for AP WG and punting on a featureset for APv2 
until there's CG-wide consensus on each feature added to it.

Starting small with APWG would unblock lots of things:
- Evan's errata work could garner more participation and clarity on next 
steps and boundaries
- Many of the work-items in the CG wiki[^1] could find editors and get 
started very soon:
      + AuthN profiles can stay in CG as non-normative Notes for now, 
iterating against existing implementations
      + Interop profiles for other networks like Nostr and BlueSky can 
be worked on if people are eager to do so
      + Retro-documentation of semantics like rel=me could start as 
Notes as well
      + An IndieWeb WG could be spun up on a separate timeline, i.e. 
earlier, if AP uncertainty is a blocker to progress on specs that 
already have willing editors and implementers?
- More detailed, well-edited use-case documentation across all the CG 
specs could surface dependencies (or dispel the appearance of 
dependencies), grounding decision-making
- Ditto test suite development, which also helps optional profiles and 
new features get stable and interoperable adoption via test-case extensions

I know "consensus" can feel like a squishy and untestable weasel-word to 
many engineer-brains, but wearing my project-management hat, I think 
unblocking all of the above and parallelizing those processes will make 
normative changes easier to decide on transparently and objectively. 
It's also easier to make delicate normative decisions after the specs in 
question are complete and testable against systems in prod, isn't it? 
Rough consensus on goals and running code first, interoperable 
independent implementations second, and only then pour cement, would be 
my Postel-ism here.

Thanks,
__juan

[^1]: https://www.w3.org/wiki/SocialCG/WG_Charter_Discussion#Deliverables

On 10/10/2023 09:21, Pierre-Antoine Champin wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> may be a middle ground would be to
>
> 1- keep the SocialWeb CG as one umbrella group with a wide scope, and
> 2- create one (or several) more focused WGs
>
> This is, for example, what happens with the Credentials CG 
> <https://www.w3.org/community/credentials/>,
> that has spun off the Verifiable Credentials 
> <https://www.w3.org/2017/vc/WG/> and the Decentralized Identifiers 
> <https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/> WGs.
>
> I also wanted to raise awareness about the notion of "maintenance WG":
> a WG that is chartered to produce no new recommendation, but only to 
> maintain existing ones:
> applying errata, making editorial and substantial improvements (but 
> not adding brand new features).
>
> Would it make sense to start by creating an Activity Pub Maintenance 
> WG for maintaining AS2 and AP?
> Nothing would prevent this group from requesting a rechartering at 
> some point to start working on ActivityPub2,
> whenever they and the CG find it is timely.
>
> Nothing would prevent, also, other WGs to emerge from the CG. The CG 
> would remain the place where the broad community incubates and 
> exchange new ideas. WGs, on the other hand, could focus on delivering 
> specs.
>
> my 2¢
>
> On 04/10/2023 20:06, Christine Lemmer-Webber wrote:
>> BTW, I agree with Evan: the CG *is* the home of ActivityPub currently.
>>
>> I made the suggestion to make a separate CG or WG for ActivityPub is
>> mainly to provide more focus within the standards process, and it was
>> primarily a suggestion about if a WG was made in particular.  It could
>> be that this is a *sub-group* or outgrowth of the SocialCG, but I am
>> also okay with it not happening.  I appreciate the massive amount of
>> work Evan is doing organizing and reviving the CG right now, by the way.
>>
>> But I see the "official home" of the specification, and the authority of
>> what constitutes ActivityPub, as the SocialCG at present.  I think
>> SocialHub is an excellent place to coordinate, and works with the
>> SocialCG.  But the SocialCG is where AP's editing authority resides, and
>> I think that's good and appropriate and it was designed to be that way.
>>
>>   - Christine
>>
>> Evan Prodromou<evan@prodromou.name>  writes:
>>
>>> SocialHub is a great place for CG members to chat.
>>>
>>> I think the FEP process is a great way to develop extensions.
>>>
>>> The core ActivityPub and Activity Streams 2.0 specs are maintained by this CG.
>>>
>>> Evan
>>>
>>> On Oct 4, 2023 03:21, hellekin<hellekin@cepheide.org>  wrote:
>>>
>>>   We do have an ActivityPub Community Group -- a Special Interest Group
>>>   actually, in the form of the SocialHub.
>>>
>>>   If Aaron Parecki thinks it's good to keep the SocialCG and work with
>>>   ActivityPub within a broader context of the Social Web protocols, then I
>>>   see no reason to split again. We can continue ActivityPub ground work on
>>>   the SocialHub, relay to the SocialCG and get the best of both worlds.
>>>
>>>   The SocialHub was created to give momentum to the ActivityPub community
>>>   following the ActivityPub Conference held in Prague in 2019, and
>>>   organized very generously by Sebastian Lasse. It was a great success and
>>>   we anticipated much work to do that would become much noise for the
>>>   SocialCG mailing-list, since this list was larger than just ActivityPub.
>>>
>>>   If now the people we wanted to avoid spamming are fine with getting the
>>>   heat, I see no reason to move away and apart. On the contrary, I feel
>>>   like we are in a situation where we have a real grassroots community
>>>   that is grounded in free software and works on Codeberg and the
>>>   SocialHub, and a standards-oriented community group who can relay and
>>>   give body to already chewed on ground work. This is the best situation
>>>   we can imagine, where the grassroots implementors lead the way and the
>>>   standards-oriented people renders that body of work normative.
>>>
>>>   I am not a driving force in the specification process, so I'm happy
>>>   whatever decision is made, but I want to underline both the grassroots
>>>   effort that have been going on over the last four years around the
>>>   SocialHub, as well as the renewed interests by the Chair to consolidate
>>>   the normative form of ActivityPub and ActivityStreams. This is a great
>>>   opportunity to engage more people with more confidence in the process,
>>>   and not isolate other protocols that, if they are less visible, are no
>>>   less important to our common success.
>>>
>>>   ==
>>>   hk