Re: [Wpack] Problem statement and scope for BoF

[Jeffrey Yasskin <[e-mail]>]

Thanks for the summary. I've made sure everything here is mentioned in the
draft charter document:

> The consolidation effects might be felt in several ways: in terms of
driving traffic to sites that have the resources to preload links

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUZcl6yQSJ5eZxMrbo6O2tVRW_U_bv0PZUxAVtR1GYA/edit#bookmark=kix.f8rqaam5jvj3

> in terms of inventivizing provision of content for majority clients,

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUZcl6yQSJ5eZxMrbo6O2tVRW_U_bv0PZUxAVtR1GYA/edit#bookmark=id.ehwkcplglqgw

> as a secondary effect of raising the cost of business for publishers.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUZcl6yQSJ5eZxMrbo6O2tVRW_U_bv0PZUxAVtR1GYA/edit#bookmark=id.ewnchx4da6jc
and
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUZcl6yQSJ5eZxMrbo6O2tVRW_U_bv0PZUxAVtR1GYA/edit#bookmark=id.knz0ld5p7r8f

I think I've also included all the concrete mechanisms you pointed out in
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2019/06/mozilla.pdf.
Specifically:

The "Centralization and control" section is covered by
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUZcl6yQSJ5eZxMrbo6O2tVRW_U_bv0PZUxAVtR1GYA/edit#bookmark=kix.acmvx6oznsq,
I think. There is additional discussion about the aggregator ranking power
in that section, but no further statements about web packaging that I could
find.

The "certainly has the effect of applying pressure toward consolidation of
market share in a few worrying ways" paragraph lists only 2 ways, which
you've helpfully repeated in your email.

I think that's it?

Thanks,
Jeffrey

On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 4:52 PM Martin Thomson <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 8, 2019, at 04:21, Jeffrey Yasskin wrote:
> > That's a great point, and I'm adding a section
> > [...] for it to my document. However, I don't have very good content for
> that section. We had the ESCAPE workshop partly to try to find ways that
> Web Packaging might increase the risk of consolidation, and Martin is
> writing the report from there, but I didn't come away with any mechanisms
> that seem likely to have a big effect.
>
> I agree that there wasn't much at the workshop that suggested how this
> could avoid some of the consolidation effects.
> >
> > Martin, do you have a good list of ways folks are worried that
> > Packaging will centralize service providers?
>
> Mozilla's position paper has my best thinking on that subject, but a few
> points for the purposes of summary...
>
> The consolidation effects might be felt in several ways: in terms of
> driving traffic to sites that have the resources to preload links, in terms
> of inventivizing provision of content for majority clients, and as a
> secondary effect of raising the cost of business for publishers.
>
> The latter point is not one standards organizations are well-equipped to
> handle.  It's a natural byproduct of having more standards.  There are two
> ways of dealing with that:
>
> 1. Stop adding to the pile.  I know it's hard to tell engineers not to
> engineer, so I don't expect this to happen.  New stuff is just too
> appealing.
>
> 2. Having more and more accessible software for handling any complexity.
> For instance, HTTPS didn't really take off until we had really good support
> infrastructure.  Jeffrey has done some of that with the tools around
> building packages, but that's a very small part of the picture.  We need
> more and better tools, including cognitive tools for understanding the
> effect of this sort of change.  The availability of those tools will always
> lag standardization.  I might speculate and say that the extent to which
> consolidation is driven by this sort of effort will depend on how big that
> lag is.
>
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