Re: [Ext] Consensus call for qlog serialization format (issue #144)

[Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[e-mail]>]

On this point ...

On Thu, Aug 5, 2021 at 11:55 AM Roberto Peon <fenix=[e-mail]>
wrote:

> Including at least one interoperable format is good.
> Having it be ascii is annoying (not very performant, requires more I/O,
> and thus decreases the fidelity at which we can ultimately capture events)
> …but it is probably better than nothing.
>

Having at least one interoperable format is excellent, since you and I can
always exchange data using that format.  Not having something that's fairly
widely implemented, at least among early implementers, really is "nothing",
so this is "better than nothing".

Having the baseline format be annoying can be OK, because that motivates
people to explore other formats while using the baseline format, if it's
TOO annoying.

I'm not saying it would have been a great plan, but at IETF 83 during
discussions about RTCWeb codec selections, when the choice between VP8 and
H.264 seemed deadlocked, the working group had a serious conversation about
picking H.261 as an annoying (or worse) baseline so that we didn't have
complete communication breakdowns, and then implementations could negotiate
for a better choice if that seemed necessary.

(see https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/83/minutes/minutes-83-rtcweb.txt for
proof).

Best,

Spencer