[Standards] Draft to Final

[Mridul Muralidharan]

Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> Hi Mridul!
> 
> Mridul Muralidharan wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>   A lot of these specs have seen quite radical change recently in
>> comparison to the 'lifetime' of the spec. 
> 
> If we don't try to push some of these forward, we never will. :)

+ 1 !

> 
> Naturally we won't try to do that until the spec in question is mature
> and has been widely implemented. Part of why I included certain specs is
> to determine how mature people think they are.
> 
>> Particularly the PEP & CAPS
>> based specs.
> 
> In fact PEP hasn't changed since last September, although the
> documentation has changed. We should probably wait until is has been
> more widely implemented before we try to push it (and pubsub) to Final.
> That might be more than a year from now.

The basic idea of pep has not changed for an year now, but the 
auto-create related issues, and corresponding changes to pubsub were 
thrashed out only recently ... and the need for another spec which can 
be used for private storage, etc.
It is quite likely that as adoption grows we will have more discussion 
and clarifications required - on both pep and pubsub changes.

> 
> You're right that XEP-0115 has undergone radical changes recently, but
> given the strong agreement that the changes were a good thing, it would
> not surprise me to see wide implementation of the updated version so
> that we could think about advancing it to Final in about a year.
> 
>> There are others which are fairly new (xmpp ping, 
> 
> Ping is so small and straightforward, and already so widely implemented,
> that I think advancing it to Final in ~6 months might be reasonable.

It is small, true but I am not sure of how many server's use it 
currently, or support it.
I think because it was so small, lot of clients ended up adding it even 
before it was draft ... I am not very sure if most of the 
implementations use it 'properly' - that is, when to use it, how 
frequently to use it, etc.
Slugging in a namespace handler and a thread to blindly send it to 
server is not the only idea :-)

> 
>> pep, caps, etc), or
>> lot of new changes have been added to them (pubsub, link local messaging).
> 
> I put pubsub and link-local in the ~12 month category. It's possible
> they would be ready by then. Maybe longer.
> 
> What are the radical changes to link-local messaging?

iirc there was quite a bit of discussion about discovery and related 
aspects, and changes made to it. It is quite possible that as we look 
more into white boarding, there might be changes required to it in 
context of p2p editing ?
My impression was that we dont have enough adoption, and so multiple 
implementations, which can unearth potential issues with this spec.

> 
>> None of these newer changes have undergone rigorous testing or have much
>> implementation experience.
> 
> That should happen in the next 6-12 months though.

You are optimistic :-) It will be good if we have as rapid adoption !
But more seriously, PEP & specs based on it add serious amount of value 
- so it will be good to standardize on them and deprecate the others 
which predated them (avatar being what I have been bugged with off late).

> 
>> It might be a good idea to wait for a while before considering them for
>> pushing to final.
> 
> Yes, probably at least 6 months and more like 12-18. But I think it's
> good to start thinking about this now.

Being in draft stage should be enough to start implementation with 
reasonable guarantees of stability - so yes, I agree with you that in 
12-18 months we should definitely be able to commit some of the above to 
final.

> 
>> Then we have oob, ibb, muc, chat state notification, privacy lists ..
>> these have been fairly stable and have multiple interoperable
>> implementations .. seem like good candidates for becoming final.
> 
> Agreed on all counts there except IBB (how widely implemented is it?)
> and perhaps privacy lists -- though interop testing will tell the tale
> on that one I think.

Very true .. I know of only few clients and server which support ibb & 
privacy lists. But that is hardly because of lack of stability of specs 
... it is similar to pubsub I guess, the 'harder' it is, the lower the 
adoption :-)
(hmm, this does not make sense for ibb though - rate limiting penalties 
should be the cause there I guess : the iq based ibb should 'solve' that 
one)


Another spec I forgot to mention was httpbind (xep 124 & 206) - Ian has 
managed to keep the spec remarkably stable inspite the seemingly large 
change to it 'recently'. Those two together have quite a bit of 
adoption, multiple interoperable implementations.


Regards,
Mridul

> 
> Peter