Re: [rtcweb] Summary of Application Developers' opinions of the current WebRTC API and SDP as a control surface

Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> Tue, 09 July 2013 03:03 UTC

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From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 13:03:12 +1000
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To: Peter Thatcher <pthatcher@google.com>
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Subject: Re: [rtcweb] Summary of Application Developers' opinions of the current WebRTC API and SDP as a control surface
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On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 12:38 AM, Peter Thatcher <pthatcher@google.com> wrote:
>
> No objections at all?  That is rather surprising to me.  I asked for some
> feedback the API in the spreadsheet from web developers, at there many
> objections from them about this part of the API.  A majority did say it was
> good enough for simple use cases, but he objections were still clearly
> non-zero.
>
> I think perhaps the web developers are not well represented at TPAC.  But I
> could be wrong.  Perhaps they are but changed their mind.  Or maybe they're
> objecting on the IETF mailing list when they should object on the IETF
> mailing list.   Or maybe the spreadsheet has a sample bias, while TPAC is
> the true sample.   I don't know, but it seems like something is going on,
> and I'd like to know what it is.
>
> Stefan, what do you think?  What could explain the apparent contradiction
> between objections on the mailing list vs. no objections f2f?

I'm not Stefan, but I have a theory.

I think there are two groups objecting and there are two things to
object against.

Here's what I'm reading...

Web Developers really just want to be given functionality. They can
build their own nice API on top of what browsers implement (jquery did
a marvellous job of that). But they want functionality. Seeing as some
things are not currently possible with SDP and O/A, they either want
to extend those to allow their functionality, or - in particular where
SDP & O/A are overkill - want an option to get out of using SDP & O/A
and use something else.

Telco engineers want their existing devices to be interoperable with
browsers as well as the ability to develop new devices in the future
with extended functionality. So, on behalf of the first goal, they
object to including functionality into SDP that other devices don't
already support, and on behalf of the second goal, they are torn
between extending SDP & O/A and starting new.

As to why you haven't seen anyone object at the TPAC (did you really
mean TPAC, btw? The next TPAC meeting is only in November) - maybe
none of the people of these two groups were present at last year's
TPAC? Or they didn't understand the consequences yet.... Also, it's
easy to object on a mailing list, while in a meeting room, you'd have
to provide an alternative and it's really hard to come up with such an
alternative IMHO.

I certainly want a simple API, but I am not sure whether what we
currently have is already the simplest possible (given current
circumstances), nor am I sure whether it wouldn't just be possible to
build a simple one on top the jquery way, which would be sufficient
for now.

HTH,
Silvia.