Re: [vwrap] Status and future of the VWRAP working group

[Meadhbh Hamrick <[e-mail]>]

yup. i'm still around.

the documents are in SVN. check them out and edit them.

there were ( i believe ) reasons why this effort originally had a
focus on SL and OpenSim: the people who organized the working group
and corralled opposing viewpoints into consensus for a charter were
employees of linden and ibm who had write access to linden's code
repository and (at least one) of the code repositories associated with
OpenSim.

we were the two parties who were interested in defining
interoperability for our implementations through this forum. the
charter of the group was not to create an entirely new virtual world
protocol, but to rectify and complete two implementations developed
independently by linden and ibm.

the reason things were done "behind your back" and "off the list" is
that we were trying to develop an interop protocol for two
implementations with differing levels of functionality and
completeness. conversations on the list frequently started with: "hey,
i have some code that does foo? should we still do foo or should we do
bar?" and ended with a number of people talking about how we should
really doing "baz" or "qux", both of which had no relation to the code
or the problem domain described in the intro document and charter.

that being said... having code is not a requirement for a working
group, but it does seem that IETF culture is deferential towards those
who produce code.

now that people with an interest in this group no longer have write
access to the linden code repository, that ability to produce one
independent implementation of the standard has gone away. which is one
of the reasons this group is rebooting.

i have on several occasions offered my assistance to anyone interested
in drafting a new charter or editing new documents. so far no one's
taken me up on my offer. i'm still happy to do a "how to write RFCs
with XML" class in-world. but again, no one's indicated an interest.

barry's been calling for participation for the last couple of months.
but as far as i can tell, morgaine's been the only person who's
produced anything. but even that.. something like 1000 or 2000 words
are probably insufficient to communicate complicated technical
concepts this group is supposed to be manipulating.

the cool thing about this group at this moment is if you want to take
over this group and recharter it, you really have to do only a small
amount of work. and honestly, if you can't manage the effort of
opening a text editor and typing out five or six paragraphs that
define the starting point for a new group charter, you're going to
find the process of actually writing RFCs to bit much.

if this group dies, it's not the end of the world for virtual worlds
and standardization. i think barry's said it several times. this group
failing is not going to be a major hindrance to forming another VW
focused group in the future.

-Cheers
-Meadhbh

--
meadhbh hamrick * it's pronounced "maeve"
@OhMeadhbh * http://meadhbh.org/ * [e-mail]



On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 7:40 AM, Barry Leiba <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Hi, Carlo, Vaughn, Izzy, Dzonatas, and everyone else.
> I'm glad to see some discussion going.  Izzy is right when he says this:
>> Of course this all may not matter unless somebody actually addresses
>> the underlying issue: That the group needs to start producing documents.
>
> Indeed.  We, the chairs, need to see real progress on the documents...
> particularly the introduction document.
>
> This discussion is a start, and, as I say, I'm pleased to see it, but
> it has to turn into real document editing very soon.
>
> I want to say one other thing:
>
>> Oops, no I said 'we'... but count me out. I still see the same people
>> around here and it's still going to fail just as bad as last time (or,
>> as I expected the first time around... some "standard" is going to
>> be produced that sucks; and that is either going to be ignored, or
>> adopted by a few large "players" who then all get major head aches
>> and problems that they can't fix; and in the end it will be the users
>> who suffer most from having a bad protocol of course :/.
>
> Carlo, Meadhbh is still around, thought she (note gender) has given up
> the editorship of the documents.  Your input is welcome -- encouraged
> -- though, of course, if you choose not to participate for whatever
> reason, that's your choice.  I think choosing not to participate
> because some particular person is also participating is a poor choice,
> but it's your choice to make.  I would like to see you reconsider
> that, if you're willing to do the work.
>
> What I do *not* want to see, and what we won't tolerate, are personal
> attacks on any participant here.  Do not engage in name-calling, do
> not question people's integrity, do not malign the companies they work
> for, and do not accuse people of malfeasance because they disagree
> with you.  If you present your ideas and others agree with what you
> say, those ideas will make it forward.  That's how we aim to work,
> here, and if this working group can continue and make progress, that's
> indeed how we'll work.
>
> So... will we make some progress on the intro document?  Can we get
> some real discussion on it, and a draft that shows some level of
> consensus within the nest few weeks?
>
> Barry, as chair
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