Re: [httpapi] Alissa Cooper's Block on charter-ietf-httpapi-00-00: (with BLOCK and COMMENT)

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

Responses below. See updated charter at:
  https://gist.github.com/mnot/8a29455df65df33d92902a1ecc3e7e68


> On 10 Sep 2020, at 10:43 pm, Alissa Cooper <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> So, to Murray and Roman's comments, yes this is intended to be a standing group -- *if* it is healthy. I would consider it on probation for at least 6-9 months, to see if it's able to have good interaction with the rest of the API community and be productive; if not, as I've said many times I'll be the one most loudly calling for it to be shut down.
> 
> I would say we put that in the charter then, so everyone agrees to revisit on the same time frame.

I've added a nine-month checkup.

>> There are a number of potential drafts out there that the group could adopt, but I'd rather see a CfAs happen in the group, rather than as part of the chartering process; that will help form the community and give it ownership over what's going on (and will give it some experience running the CfA process). I gave a talk about API standards and linked to the mailing list last night, and so far the mailing list has almost 20 new members -- many who AFAICT are new to the IETF and also actively practicing in this area.
>> 
>> So if the IESG insists, we can add a few initial drafts as milestones, but for the reasons above I have a fairly strong preference not to.
>> 
>>> In particular, I am wondering how the WG will define "specific use cases or applications" as referred to where the text says, "this WG will not take on work items for APIs for specific use cases or applications."
>> 
>> It says the WG will *not* do those things.
> 
> Right, my question is how do you know which things you won’t do? 
> 
>> That text is intended to prevent the WG from defining specific APIs. For example, if someone wants to create a HTTP API for DNS (to use a recent example), this group wouldn't be an appropriate place to do that.
> 
> I think for applications it’s clearer, but what is a “specific use case”? To use your example above, let’s say my use case is that I want to be able to digitally sign the contents of HTTP messages. Since that is apparently in scope for the WG, why does it not count as a “specific use case”? I’m not arguing with the limitation, I’m just hoping to have the charter be more expressive in describing the boundary.

Ah, I see. I've tried to address this, see what you think.


>>> I agree with Magnus that it is unclear whether the third bullet encompasses work that the WG will do or not.
>> 
>> The intent there was that the group could talk about proposals for new status codes, but would need to defer their actual standardisation to the HTTP WG (since in HTTP status codes, like methods, are generic and not supposed to be specific to any application or even type of application).
> 
> Ok. It shouldn’t be in a bulleted list of what the WG’s outputs will be, but maybe can be described in its own paragraph.

Previously done.

Cheers,

--
Mark Nottingham   https://www.mnot.net/