Re: [hybi] Process! was: [whatwg] HttpOnly cookie for WebSocket?

[Justin Erenkrantz <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Greg Wilkins <[e-mail]> wrote:
> The whatwg process relies on the consent of a single individual
> (yourself) as editor.  This position is an appointment made by an
> invitation only committee made up of 9 representatives from
> various  browser manufacturers.   You are also on that committee,
> the spokesman for the group and an employee of the company that
> is shipping the first client implementation.

Yes, this is my biggest concern about the process so far - it seems
very exclusionary to those of us who develop servers.  So far, this is
a significant portion of the community that I feel has not had a
legitimate chance to provide any real input into the WebSocket
protocol.  Instead, as an httpd developer who knows just as much about
HTTP as anyone else on this list, I just get the feeling that the
browser developers are telling me that I need to implement a
"protocol" without providing a legitimate opportunity for feedback.

Instead, I just see that there have been unilateral decisions that
have profound consequences (mandated port, conflation of security,
etc.) that show little hope of being re-considered.  It seems that
folks are intending to rubber-stamp the draft from WHATWG which
is...sad.  As such, it often leaves me wondering whether I should even
bother trying - so I applaud Greg for trying to speak up while also
getting Jetty to speak WebSocket.

I've expressed my feelings before that the current "draft" documents
for WebSocket is pretty impenetrable and I hope that future IETF
drafts alter it into something that is independently implementable by
both server and client developers.  Part of the elegance of HTTP is
that it's pretty easy to implement a basic reasonably-conformant
version - WebSocket simply does not have that property at this time.

Since IETF 77 is in my backyard, I do hope to attend any WG sessions
related to hybi.  If folks are interested in having a working session
on rewriting the latest draft into something that is more
approachable, I'm definitely interested.  I really would like to offer
something constructive as I share the goals of the WG - there is a
need for an async protocol, but I'm hard-pressed to stand behind the
current process as I don't feel very enfranchised at the moment.  --
justin