Re: Should the specs be forked and maintained elsewhere?

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  <mailto: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  <mailto: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
> >
> >
> >