Re: groups.io mailing list

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

On Fri, Jun 01, 2018 at 10:19:36AM -0400, Chet Ensign wrote:
> Michael, more details below... 
> 
> On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 7:12 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
>     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.
> 
> 
> No. The specific rules I'm referring to are: 
> 
> ttps://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/
> oasis-committee-operations-process-2017-11-03#visibility-mailingLists:  "Each
> committee shall be provided upon formation with ... a means to collect public
> comments. ... The purpose of the committee's public comment facility is to
> receive comments from the public." 
> 
> and 
> 
> https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/tc-process-2017-05-26#
> publicReview:  "Comments from non-TC Members must be collected via the TC's
> archived public comment facility; comments made through any other means shall
> not be accepted."
> 
> OASIS designates and provides the comment facility; it is not a choice of a TC.
> Please keep in mind that we have to regulate, oversee, and protect the
> interests of 60+ technical communities. We cannot allow individual TCs to start
> inventing their own new ways of doing things without making it difficult or
> impossible for us to vouch for their work. The standing of OASIS output - the
> IPR commitments and protections, the acceptance of OASIS standards by the
> broader community, ANSI accreditation, ISO PAS submitter status, and more - is
> based on review and approval of our rules and our commitment to uphold them. We
> have to change how we support those rules with care and apply any mechanisms we
> approve across the board. Especially anywhere IPR questions are involved. 
> 
> 
>     as well as the virtio-comment web form
> 
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean https://www.oasis-open.org/
> committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=virtio ?

Hmm I guess I'm confused. I thought there's a web form where
one can agree to the IPR and post without going through mail.
Not sure why I thought so, sorry about the noise.

> 
>     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.
> 
> 
> 'CC a list on technical discussions on other forums' - well, technical
> proposals are precisely the kind of input that we have to make sure is covered.
> Having the TC use someone's input on another list without explicitly ensuring
> that they are aware they are making a covered contribution to the VIRTIO TC
> leaves the TC in a vulnerable position. 

Well we don't live in a vacuum. Since we are too agressive people just
go discuss virtio on other lists, and some TC members are subscribed to
these. I know I am.

One problem that happens a lot is that a member would mail a TC mailing
list and copy an external mailing list.  A person not subscribed to the
TC one gets a copy through the external list and does reply all.  That
person's reply gets dropped to the floor with a request to subscribe
*but the member gets a copy anyway*.

So dropping email isn't very effective in protecting the TC from being
in a vulnerable position. To improve the sitation we really should make
as much effort as possible to have people agree to the IPR.
Current mechanism assumes instead it's mostly poster's problem.



>     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.
> 
> Ok, I see that it is more attractive than having to subscribe first.

That's somewhat of an understatement. I attempted to set virtio-dev as
the official mailing list for virtio linux driver development and linux
developers requested its removal because of the subscriber-only policy.
But we definitely do want input from driver developers as they are the
main users of the spec.

Another problem is automated email by tools. No IPR in their output
but these often use no-rely addresses that can't subscribe to the list.

Yes another problem is archiving of the the members-only list.
Multiple public archives external to OASIS can only be a good thing,
but one normally needs to subscribe the archiver and that does not
work for the members-only list.

> This is
> something we can look into. 

Since I'm in a wish-on-a-star mood today, also hopefully
- it's possible to just reply "yes" to "the agree to IPR?" email
  (instead of clicking)
- posted is then white-listed for future posts

>     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.
> 
> 
> Yes, I agree that search is a problem with our current configuration. I expect
> that our upgrades coming later this year will address that problem. 

BTW ability to download the archive is also nice to have.

> Let me discuss with Scott and Jamie and see if we can do anything in our
> current set up. 
> 
> /chet
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>     > 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
>     > Mobile: +1 201-341-1393 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> /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
> Mobile: +1 201-341-1393