Re: groups.io mailing list

["Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>]

On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 05:50:15PM -0400, Chet Ensign wrote:
> Hi Michael, 
> 
> I'd like to know more about the appeal of groups.io. I'm not sure what it
> offers that leads you to want to do this but I'd certainly like to find out how
> it might be of use. 
> 
> However, I must warn you all - Jamie is cc'ed and can provide more background -
> that soliciting feedback to the TC from a non-OASIS-approved channel like
> groups.io would violate the OASIS TC Process rules

Do you mean this one:

	Each TC shall be provided with a public comment facility, the purpose of
	which is to receive comments from the public and is not for general
	discussion. Comments shall be publicly archived and must be considered
	by the TC.. TCs are not required to respond to comments. Comments to the
	TC made by non-TC Members, including from the public, must be made via
	the TC's comment facility, and shall not be accepted via any other
	means.

so the idea is we'd designate the specific list as our public comment
facility then. Right now our facility consists of:
virtio-comment
virtio-dev
virtio (members only)
as well as the virtio-comment web form

We'd make the facility include a groups.io list then. It's publically
archived, hard to see what's wrong with it assuming we make
people agree to IPR rules when they comment.


> and quite possibly put your
> deliverables at risk. I understand that the subscribe requirement of
> virtio-comment@ is off-putting. We have heard the objection before. However, it
> is by the act of subscribing that your commenters contributions are bound to
> the TC's IPR mode and the OASIS copyright.

Right, I know that. 

> By replying to the confirmation
> message, they make that commitment. By taking in feedback through a
> side-channel, you leave yourselves open to later claims against the work. 

The way I see it, we can make messages from non-subscribers moderated.
Moderator can then ask contributor to agree to the IPR rules before
approving - there appears to be some facility for that.

Maybe down the road this part can be automated.

> This is not hypothetical. While uncommon, we've had several incidents where TCs
> skirted these rules and OASIS received outside claims asserted against their
> work products. In one I was directly involved with, we had to take a work
> product down. 
>
> If you want a less top-heavy way for non-material feedback - typos or
> observations on how clear some text may be - the TC GitHub is certainly an
> option. You can offer people the option to open issues or add comments to
> issues there; that is one of its expected uses. 

Unfortunately typos isn't the big issue. The issue is ability to CC a
virtio list on technical discussions that take place on other forums,
such as hypervisor or emulator lists.


> And again, we are happy to talk about the features of groups.io that are
> appealing. On a quick scan, it does look like there are features there that I
> personally would find attractive. 

An ideal contribution flow would be for contributor to send mail to list
and to get back a link to agree to IPR rules, contributor clicks it,
contribution gets forwarded.

I don't think such a feature is there, but groups.io looks like they are
actually being maintained, so maybe they'll add it.

> 
> Let me know if you'd like to further discuss. 
> 
> Also, thanks for checking first. I really appreciate that. 
> 
> Best,  
> 
> /chet

The flexible moderation is mostly what I was looking at, but a working
search is also a big plus: right now finding a message in an archive is
a manual process. Archiving of attachments is also nice since some
people edit the PDF and send comments this way.



> On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 5:03 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
>     Hello!
>     After much consideration, I'm seriously thinking about creating
>     an groups.io mailing list for the virtio TC feedback.
> 
>     The main issue I'm trying to address is the subscriber-only nature of
>     the list which is a big problem for casual commenters: when one sends
>     email to the list, message is bounced back. One has to subscribe
>     and resend.
> 
>     groups.io seems to handle this in a more reasonable way.
> 
>     But API access with things like tags allowing better automation
>     with e.g. the voting process would also be welcome.
>    
>     --
>     MST
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> /chet 
> ----------------
> 
> Looking forward to Borderless Cyber 2018, 3-5 Oct, Washington, D.C.
> Organized by The World Bank, OASIS, and Georgetown University
> 
> Chet Ensign
> Chief Technical Community Steward
> OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
> http://www.oasis-open.org
> 
> Primary: +1 973-996-2298
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