Re: On babies and bathwater (was Re: [rtcweb] Summary of Application Developers' opinions of the current WebRTC API and SDP as a control surface)

You keep talking about proprietary P2P systems but neglect that various 
SIP vendors are equally opposed to this SDP O/A mandate. This is _not_ a 
"new tech" vs "existing standards tech" issue.

Nor is this SDP O/A mandate truly about compatibility with an existing 
industry. Not a single non-WebRTC-tailored device on the planet is 
compatible with WebRTC.

Yes, I would absolutely expect browser vendors to take into 
consideration the feedback of their developer community and adapt 
accordingly.

Nobody I'm aware of is suggesting throwing away everything and start 
from scratch. We want to control the RTP engine from JS without fighting 
with the SDP O/A mandate. That requires a clean RTP control API only. 
The signaling can be done entirely in JS, including SDP O/A.

You say "The current draft spec is very nicely setup to meet the larger 
objectives towards broad adoption." That's a matter of opinion. 
Considering only two of the four browser vendors are implementing WebRTC 
in its current form. Of the two remaining, one is strongly and vocally 
opposed to this specification. That is not consensus nor universal adoption.

-Robin


> Martin Steinmann <mailto:martin@ezuce.com>
> 19 July, 2013 7:55 PM
> On Jul 19, 2013, at 6:18 PM, Martin Thomson<martin.thomson@gmail.com>  wrote:
>
> I have been on this list for a long time, likely like many others who are wondering what is going on.
>
> Does anyone really expect Google and Mozilla to change their implementation just because some other companies want to build, for the most part, proprietary peer-to-peer systems?  To transform the multi-billion dollar telecoms industry into a Web economy you need legacy interop and a consistent and simple (high-level) API that facilitates interoperability.  From an economic perspective this is very simple.
>
> Elevating this discussion from a pure technical argument and into the real world would require those who say they represent browser vendors to actually state what standard these browsers would support and by when and how these standards would facilitate interop.  Are the IE, Lync, and Skype teams all on the same page?  Such a commitment would make a real difference and resonate with the industry at large.
>
> What we the users and developers of apps really need is consensus and commitment for browser support, desktop and mobile.  I have seen the Skype team propose CU-RTC-Web, but would IE support it? How about Lync?  And would Microsoft support the industry making the implementation available in open source and with a royalty free patent grant?  What is the argument to convince Google and Mozilla to re-implement?  Without thinking this through the best API proposal is pretty useless and the argument mainly academic.
>
> The current draft spec is very nicely setup to meet the larger objectives towards broad adoption.  To counter that will require an all-encompassing proposal and committment and not just another technical spec thrown into the ring.
>
> --martin