Agenda for Mar 21, 2024

[nairnandu]

Here is the proposed agenda for Mar 21, 2024:

• Interop 2024 process retrospective

[nairnandu]

Attendees: @nairnandu, @lolaodelola, @jensimmons, @zcorpan, @nt1m, @jgraham, @dandclark, @meyerweb, @stubbornella, @tantek

Brief notes from the meeting today:

• Retrospective
  • dandclark: The process might have been too complex. Round 1 was useful. Keeping it tight is important. For the things that dont fit, getting them out early would be useful. Much of the work was done for round 2 and the third round seems redundant. The big issue for us: 1) weird not to have consensus on ‘n’ till the very end and 2)member confidentiality - developers not having enough insight. The process being more open throughout would be our preference and operate like any other WG. Failing that, member organizations choosing to publicize their own rankings should be default.
  • jgraham: 2 steps we could do - look backwards and look forward. Some organizations have put some thoughts in here. The thing that I would like to get to today is defining the path forward. We can start by conveying the goals - what do we think is important? One thing we prioritized for this year was time. One of the things to optimize for, next time, would be people not being surprised at the end of the cycle.
  • stubbornella: there is a piece of it that is capacity planning, which is hard to do ahead of time. Surprises might be inevitable due to the planning timeline differences
  • zcorpan: as long as there are proposals. Would it make sense to try the compat 2021 approach where the team looked at public data to decide on areas to focus on?
  • meyerweb: for proposals - the first round should be a lot more restrictive.
  • nt1m: are we documenting these points?
  • nairnandu: had shared a doc with the team earlier to share thoughts on the process ahead of the meeting. Not everyone seems to have added their thoughts into it.
  • jgraham: things to optimize for should be documented and then discussed
  • jensimmons: not really sure what we are trying to do? One of the things we could do is stronger facilitation to create a structure around this conversation. I am happy to facilitate that conversation. Maybe we could start with sharing our perspective for each round.
  • jgraham: we have discussed this before and decided to document our thoughts on the process. Apple doesn’t seem to have done that. If the shared doc approach does not work, it should have been raised ahead of time.
  • jensimmons: would prefer to have a 5 min block for each org to present their thoughts, verbally
  • nairnandu: it was decided in the last meeting that all orgs would put their thoughts into the doc. If there is hesitation in doing that, we can try the alternative approach being proposed here
  • dandclark: I did like the approach of having thoughts documented ahead of time and then using the meeting time to discuss. The one thing that would help our thinking - if Microsoft were to publish our rankings for 2024 - would there be any objections?
  • nt1m: it kind of sets some peer pressure. If Microsoft does it, there will be pressure on others to do it as well.
  • jgraham: by deduction, it would make other rankings obvious.
  • dandclark: it would be helpful to have the rules around sharing of rankings documented in the process for next year
  • Next step: In the next meeting, jensimmons will facilitate the conversation on how we experienced the 2024 process.

[dandclark]

Belatedly sharing the slightly higher-resolution notes I took on the part of the discussion from this meeting about orgs publishing their own interop votes/positions, since I want to make sure we have the policy on this recorded correctly:

dandclark: Question for clarity for last year's process, would there be objections if Microsoft publishes our own positions, meaning votes/vetoes/rankings? nt1m: Problem is it sets peer pressure. If microsoft does it, people will ask if other companies do that. Indirectly it does induce pressure. jgraham: More directly, if you say everyone can publish their own list of vetoes, it makes it obvious what everyone else did. Violates the spirit of that agreement. dandclark: Is this retracting Apple's comments from last meeting where it was stated we could publish our own positions? jgraham: My understanding is it should be like publishing standards positions. But when it's specifically In the context of interop, that becomes a problem.