XMPP Council - 2018-05-09

Driving. Should be back online in plenty of time, but just in case I don't respond right away you'll know why.

Time to grab a cuppa, then.

OK.

1) Roll Call

Hi

I'm here, good timing.

I'm here.

Ge0rG, ?

!summon Ge0rG

I'll assume no Ge0rG then.

2) Hoorah because Tedd Sterr is doing the minutes.

[15:07:03] <Ge0rG> I'm pretty sure I won't be able to attend next week

I'd like it minuted that I like him doing the minutes.

Kev, Ta.

3) Adopt Proposed new XEP: XMPP Connections across HTTPS (HACX) Title: XMPP Connections across HTTPS (HACX) Abstract: This specification defines a procedure to look up various connection methods for an XMPP server over HTTPS, with a focus on censorship resistance. URL: https://xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/hacx.html

Given the suggestion on-list that we delay looking at this until the next update and pseudovote next week, I'd propose doing that.

Well, I'm not convinced that any amount of editing is going to make this right, but I'm happy to defer if others think it's worthwhile?

I'm also happy to defer it; I have concerns with this one and wouldn't mind having a chance to think about it a bit more anyways.

happy to defer the vote until next week, that is.

Well, I'm -1 this week, but if he's planning to Make Things Better, I'd have thought may as well look at it next week instead.

OK, let's just pretend it was never on the agenda and consider it next week.

+1

4) XEPs Stuck In Proposed

We had a discussion on-list about this, and various suggestions of removing various states were proposed.

Does anyone know if any specific proposals (ie, a PR to XEP-0001) are going to be made?

I made a specific proposal but not as a PR, or as appropriate verbiage to make a PR.

Not that I have heard of

But I think being stuck in Proposed is probably a feature.

I think it's at best symptomatic of a different problem.

And yes, I think it's a feature that we can see the stuckage.

Anyway, my proposal was that the end of an LC sees the following happen: 1) Council votes on advancing to Draft 2) If (1) failed, Council votes on Rejecting 3) If (2) fails, it returns to Experimental

And then if no-one makes appropriate updates within the deferal period, it defers.

That's not awful. (I dislike the double-vote, but still)

This solves the problem part of stuck-in-proposed, which is that we don't want to Reject and our process doesn't allow for better, while keeping the nice bit (we see if something's genuinely forgotten).

It also allows things to defer naturally if whatever stopped it going to Draft isn't then addressed.

The double-vote is slightly icky, but is also the most straightforward thing I could think of.

I'd prefer that to the current situation, or to removing Proposed entirely, certainly.

seems good to me

Right, but we haven't been doing (2)...

I'm not sure I see the utility of Rejected, generally, given we've virtually never used it, but still.

This all just seems like something we need to discuss each time; where do we expect the XEP to go in the future if we're not going to advance it now? How we do that doesn't really matter to me. More procedure seems worthless, but if it makes us discuss it I think that's fine.

peter: Right, which is counter to our process in XEP1, so I think we should fix XEP1, and this seems like the simplest way to do that, to me.

Dave: Sometimes we accept something to Experimental and don't entirely expect it to ever be advanced to Draft, but we want the barrier to Experimental deliberately low. This allows us to have a (true) Experiment and then to fail the experiment.

OK, I'll take on the action to write up Kev's proposal as a PR unless Kev wants to.

Please feel free.

Kev, I agree, but we have done that virtually never. We let things whither to Deferred instead and be fished back out as desired.

FWIW, I don't think (2) is a policy problem at all. I was reverting to experimental when I remembered to do it, but mostly I didn't because it's a manual process and the editor process is a pain in the ass.

SamWhited: I may be cynical, but I fear that one day someone litigous will aim at the XSF for us not following our formal process.

I agree that stuff going back to Experimental is the conceptually Right thing to do in the majority of cases, I'd just like our process to match.

SamWhited, Right, what Kev says. We probably need an appeals process so if people think Council isn't following the process they can ask Board to take a look, too.

Sure, sure, if we want to make it match what we were doing anyways that's fine, but I'm just saying that I don't think it will change or solve anything.

SamWhited, Mostly, though, XEP-0001 should document what we do, rather than be an edict for us to follow mindlessly.

And the reason for allowing Council to Reject is much the same. Protection against a Bad Actor.

Anyway, I'll take that on.

5) AOB

Any Other Business?

It's right that we should basically never have to do this, because we should basically never have a bad actor, but just in case, we don't want to be screwed over when we can't kill a XEP that someone's abusing.

Dave: Not here.

6) Next Meeting

SBTSBC

Same time next week OK for everyone?

Yew

Yes

wfm

7) Ite, Meeting Est.

Thanks all.

I'll hopefully have a period of having a bit more time to spend on all this, and not go dashing about the country on a moment's notice. Sorry for my poor performance recently.

Dave: performance reviews happen in October, so you have time to improve ;-)