[MPEG-OTSPEC] Draft AHG report for your review

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 10:41 AM Levantovsky, Vladimir <
Vladimir.Levantovsky at monotype.com> wrote:

> *On* Wednesday, October 7, 2020 7:09 AM Caleb Maclennan wrote:
>
>
> I second Simon's objection to section IV.
>
> Section III does a fair enough job of summarizing activities related
> to the group mandates,
>
>
>
> Thank you.
>
>
>
> but section IV comes across as implying that
> everything is now hunky-dory and back to business as usual. Given the
> ongoing allegations of abuse, the unresolved proposals for disbanding
> or restructuring, and the general level of frustration with the
> process I don't think it's fair to summarize as "we achieved a much
> better shared understanding".
>
>
>
> I addressed this particular part of the sentence in my previous reply to
> Simon. As far as allegations of abuse are concerned, I think it was already
> established that they are without merit
>

How was "already established"?



> – it did not happen in this AHG. At this point, I am not going to argue
> whether something did or didn’t happen elsewhere, but as far as ISO work is
> concerned – there is no relevance, we do not discuss private affairs of our
> members.
>
>
>
> If I was a committee reading this report
> with no background in the actual AHG activity I think I would come
> away from this summary with a different perspective than I have.
>
>
>
> The committee reading this report has a pre-conceived notion that members
> of the AHG are individuals who are either WG members or invited experts,
> and the agreement to abide by the existing processes is implied. I am not
> saying we have to like it, but this is no different than any other
> organization where members must agree to something before they can join.
> For many years, this group has been quite liberal, and the agreements were
> implied – I suspect (and concerned) things might change going forward.
>
>
>
> I don't even agree with all of the unresolved things (for example‌I
> don't support the proposal to disband the AHG at all!) but it doesn't
> seem right to gloss over the actual state of affairs. Rather than all
> understanding what "we need to follow", some people are actively
> proposing other ways and half of us are basically trying to
> work-around what we consider to be a problematic system. Yes we
> understand that the ISO ship isn't going to change course for us, but
> we also understand the pragmatic solution is to do a lot of work
> outside of the ISO umbrella.
>
>
>
> The decisions whether the work can be done here or elsewhere is our
> choice, but I think it would be unreasonable to expect that we can demand
> significant process changes before we agree to do the work. ISO process
> assumes that every member has an access to the text of the standard, that
> anyone can make a proposal to change or improve something, and that these
> proposals will be reviewed fairly by the WG who is responsible for
> conducting that work, while at the same time following the requirement of
> the process.
>
>
>
> The proposal to extend the functionality of the COLR table is a vivid
> example of how things can be done, and the documented process requirements (
> https://github.com/MPEGGroup/OpenFontFormat/pull/5/files#diff-04c6e90faac2675aa89e2176d2eec7d8)
> offer sufficient details on how things can be done effectively. In the
> specific example of COLRv1 development, I would stipulate that everything
> that initially happened in googlefonts repo (
> https://github.com/googlefonts/colr-gradients-spec/blob/master/colr-gradients-spec.md)
> could now happen in this AHG – effectively we have updated our processes to
> allow this to happen.
>
>
>
> The summary implies that only out of
> scope work is being spun off to other venues, but there are also some
> things that could have been in-scope for the AHG that are being
> handled elsewhere as work arounds from a problematic venue and
> process.
>
> I disagree. There is no such statement implied, and it would be contrary
> to the very nature of the ISO process. The work that leads to new proposals
> can happen either collaboratively within the WG (and within the AHG
> established by them) or outside. In either case, when a proposal is
> presented to WG it will be treated fairly.
>
>
> Additionally a more minor point:
>
> In Section V it would be nice if the request regarding the GH repo
> could be a bit more direct, something along the lines of "be
> recognized as an officially sanctioned venue for technical discussions
> and issue tracking in relation to the OFF". This would bring it a
> little bit farther out of limbo than the current wording that could be
> read to mean that everything needed to happen in parallel. If you want
> to add that final proposals still need to be run through the AHG list
> that would be fine, but it would be nice if technical discussions that
> happen in issues (and only in issues) there can be officially blessed
> as having been part of AHG‌ activities.
>
>
>
> Thank you, I agree this is a good suggestion, please see attached the new
> updated text of the report with the proposed changes.
>
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> Vlad
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 10:59 AM Simon Cozens <simon at simon-cozens.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > On 07/10/2020 07:07, Levantovsky, Vladimir wrote:
> > > Please find attached the draft AHG report for your review and comments.
> > > I would like to ask you to submit your comments no later than by end of
> > > day on Wednesday, Oct. 7^th . I plan to submit this report to the WG no
> > > later than the morning of Oct. 8^th – sorry for a short notice.
> >
> > Hi Vlad. Thanks so much for the work involved in pulling this together.
> > I think in general it was a fair and honest summary of the past few
> > months. However, I take exception to one sentence in section IV:
> >
> > "we achieved a much better shared understanding of the limitations of
> > the processes we need to follow"
> >
> > This suggests that, now we all understand the processes better, there is
> > an acceptance of the "need" to follow those processes. I don't think
> > this is a fair representation of what has been said on this group; there
> > has been considerable discussion of how to work around these processes,
> > including a serious proposal to disband the AHG altogether. This does
> > not, to me, sound like a group of people which has meekly accepted the
> > need to follow the rules.
> >
> > S
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