Re: [GNAP] GNAP Editors' Use of GitHub Issues

[Justin Richer <[e-mail]>]

With the editor hat on:

A new spec like this is exciting work, and it’s inevitably going to bring in lots of ideas of what it could do and what it could incorporate. These ideas are extremely valuable as they are what push new work into the realms of innovation and possibility and out of the status quo from which it sprang. But there’s a downside to this stream of ideas: most of them aren’t solid enough to incorporate in any way. They’re just loose ideas that maybe we want to consider, but they don’t have anything we can turn to and say “we should build that” or “we shouldn’t build that” since there isn’t any “that” to build. 

The editors have found that many of the issues currently filed seem to fit into this category. There might be an interesting idea in there, but without something specific to tie the idea to, we don’t have a lot to work with as editors, and there are a lot of other items that the group needs to decide and fix first. It’s an issue of triage.

The goal of the “Postponed” tag, as I understand how we’re using it, is to tag issues that might need some future discussion, but we aren’t there yet. Something tagged as “Postponed” but left open long term was meant to flag it as an important detail we should get back to, when we can. Something tagged “Postponed” and closed was meant to flag it as something we might want to revisit, but only when we’ve got something concrete to work against. It’s not meant to say that the group has decided not to do it, it’s meant as a way to acknowledge the input and potentially tie back to it in the future, even if the issue got closed.

It seems like the terminology of “Postponed” didn’t quite capture that intent, and honestly it might not be the best tool for us to use here. I think we we can work with the idea of IETF meeting-based milestones, as has been suggested by several people. The important outcome is that we don’t create a process that’s susceptible to getting buried in “wouldn’t it be nice if…” sentiments to the detriment of forward progress on a functioning protocol. Right now, we’ve got a lot of items that amount to possible future branches, and while we shouldn’t simple forget them, we shouldn’t be focusing energy on them until someone is able to take the effort to explore that branch. At such a time, we can open a new issue and PR’s for that, and link back to these historical artifacts for background and context. By tying such issues to an IETF meeting milestone, we can put some boundaries on items to keep them from languishing. When the milestone comes up, we can evaluate if there’s something to look at yet or not.

 — Justin

> On Nov 27, 2020, at 4:03 AM, Fabien Imbault <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Hi there, 
> 
> One of the potential problems we'd like to avoid is to have an ever growing list of open issues that we never close. 
> 
> The idea of having milestones (e.g. IETF110) might be a complementary way of managing priorities.
> 
> Editors will revert back to the list after the US vacation days.
> 
> Cheers,
> Fabien
> 
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 1:26 AM Tom Jones <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> i agree - drop postponed - if you can't say till when, then close. Issues can always be added by anyone at anytime.
> Peace ..tom
> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 10:27 AM Yaron Sheffer <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> Commenting on the proposed process (chair hat off):
> 
>  
> 
> I think “postponed” issues should not be closed. Once something is closed, we should be reasonably confident that it is resolved for good. People rarely search through closed issues.
> 
>  
> 
> Moreover, IMO the label “postponed” is not actionable. Instead, I suggest to mark such issues with future milestones, e.g. “IETF110”, meaning that at this time we will review the issue. Otherwise, the “postponed” issues will probably suffer the destiny of all “low priority” issues – they will be ignored for months and eventually closed en masse. See [1] for GitHub milestones.
> 
>  
> 
> Otherwise I am fine with the rest of the process.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>                 Yaron
> 
>  
> 
> [1] https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/managing-your-work-on-github/about-milestones <https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/managing-your-work-on-github/about-milestones>
>  
> 
>  
> 
> From: TXAuth <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> on behalf of Aaron Parecki <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>>
> Date: Wednesday, November 25, 2020 at 18:37
> To: GNAP Mailing List <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>>
> Subject: [GNAP] GNAP Editors' Use of GitHub Issues
> 
>  
> 
> The editors met yesterday to discuss the issues that were pulled out of the previous draft text and document a process for how to resolve these and future issues. We would like to explain how we plan on using labels on GitHub issues to keep track of discussions and keep things moving.
> 
> When there are substantive issues or pull requests, the editors will avoid merging or closing those outright, and instead mark them as "pending", so that these can be brought to the attention of the larger group. If no additional discussion happens on these, the merge or close action will be taken in 7 days. Note for this first round we are setting the deadline for the issues below as Dec 11th due to the US holiday and the fact that this is the first time using this process.
> 
> "Pending Merge"
> When specific text is proposed in a PR (by anyone, not limited to the editors), and the editors believe this text reflects the consensus of the working group, this marks that the PR will be merged in 7 days unless there is a clear alternative proposal accepted by the working group.
> 
> "Pending Close"
> When the editors believe an issue no longer needs discussion, we'll mark it "Pending Close". The issue will be closed in 7 days unless someone brings new information to the discussion. This tag is not applied to issues that will be closed by a specific pull request.
> 
> There are two additional labels we will use to flag issues to the group.
> 
> "Needs Text"
> The editors suggest this issue needs additional text in the spec to clarify why this section is needed and under what circumstances. Without a concrete proposal of text to be included in the spec, this section will be removed in a future update.
> 
> "Postponed"
> This issue can be reconsidered in the future with a more concrete discussion but is not targeted for immediate concrete changes to the spec text. When used on its own, this label does not indicate that an issue is targeted to be closed. An issue may also be marked "Pending Close", and this is used so that we can distinguish closed issues between discussions that have concluded or things that we may want to revisit in the future. Remember that closed issues are not deleted and their contents are still findable and readable, and that new issues can reference closed issues.
> 
> With these labels in mind, here are the list of issues and their statuses we were able to discuss on our last editor's call. The action on these pending issues will be taken on Dec 11th to give the group enough time to review this list. For this first round, many of the issues are marked "Pending Close" as we're looking for low hanging fruit to prune the list of issues down. In the future, you can expect to see more "Pending Merge" issues as we're bringing proposed text to review by the WG.
> 
> Postponed:
> 
> * Generic claim extension mechanism
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/131 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/131>
> 
> Pending Merge:
> 
> * Make access token mandatory for continuation API calls
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/pull/129 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/pull/129>
> 
> Postponed and Pending Close:
> 
> * Fetchable Keys
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/47 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/47>
> * Including OpenID Connect Claims
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/64 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/64>
> * Application communication with back-end
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/82 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/82>
> * Additional post-interaction protocols
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/83 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/83>
> 
> Pending Close:
>     
> * HTTP PUT vs POST for rotating access tokens
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/100 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/100>
> * Use of hash with unique callback URL
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/84 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/84>
> * Interaction considerations
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/81 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/81>
> * Expanding dynamic reference handles
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/76 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/76>
> * Post interaction callback nonce
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/73 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/73>
> * Unique callback URIs 
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/55 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/55>
> * Instance identifier
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/46 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/46>
> * Requesting resources by reference
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/36 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/36>
> * Mapping resource references
> ** https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/35 <https://github.com/ietf-wg-gnap/gnap-core-protocol/issues/35>
> ---
> 
> Aaron Parecki
> 
> https://aaronparecki.com <https://aaronparecki.com/>
>  
> 
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