[MPEG-OTSPEC] Draft AHG report for your review

[Levantovsky, Vladimir]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2020 5:54 PM Caleb Maclennan wrote:
>On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 7:41 PM Levantovsky, Vladimir <Vladimir.Levantovsky at monotype.com> wrote:
>> As far as allegations of abuse are concerned, I think it was already established that they are without merit – it did not happen in this AHG.

> First "it" is somewhat reductionist, as best I can figure there are quite a number of allegations, some of them clearly about this that happened in this AHG.

> Secondly, I don't think anything has been "established", only "asserted". That's a big difference.

Fair enough. The allegations of potential wrongdoing have been made, a request for submitting specific complaints and facts that support multiple allegations to a higher authority has, so far, remained unanswered. 
No official conclusions have been reached - therefore, I am not going to comment on any of this as parts of ongoing investigation in the AHG report. These matters are now in the SC29/WG3 hands, not in this AHG.

>> The proposal to extend the functionality of the COLR table is a vivid 
>> example of how things can be done

> Vivid, maybe, but not all rosy. There has been a concerted effort to turn it around, but it nearly went off the rails largely because it disappeared into a black box editorial process along the way.

No, this is not how I see the events happened. There was indeed a concerted effort to update the proposal to account for all meaningful technical comments, but one member of the group decided to take a stance and declared his standing objections to ANY proposals discussed in this AHG (https://lists.aau.at/pipermail/mpeg-otspec/2020-October/002512.html), which is an abuse of the process. ISO Directives (https://www.iso.org/sites/directives/current/consolidated/index.xhtml#_idTextAnchor160) provide a clear definition of what constitutes a consensus:
“consensus: General agreement, characterized by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues by any important part of the concerned interests and by a process that involves seeking to take into account the views of all parties concerned and to reconcile any conflicting arguments.

NOTE     Consensus need not imply unanimity.”

Based on the substantive discussions we conducted on GitHub repo and on this mailing list, I could have easily overturned the objection by _declaring_ consensus, but it wasn't necessary. There is very important aspect here that we all need to keep in mind (something that I mentioned on this list more than once) - this AHG does not make "decisions", we make "recommendations". The WG makes decisions based on the input submissions and discussions conducted by the WG members, and while WG members will definitely consider our recommendations, the members do not need AHG permission to submit their input. 

>> Thank you, I agree this is a good suggestion, please see attached the new updated text of the report with the proposed changes.

> I see you copied some of my wording but I think you may have missed the overall point. I was hoping to see discussion on technical issues on the issue tracker count as official "it happened in the AHG"
discussion. In other words *not* having to CC everything to the mailing list in order to avoid future accusations of "it didn't happen". The upshot of my suggestion would be that people have to subscribe to both the list and add the repository to their watch list if they expect to stay abreast of OFF technical discussions. The way you worded it people can ignore the repository and expect to be appraised of everything via the mailing list. What I want to avoid is technical reviews being done in two places at two different phases of the process and likely covering some of the same ground.
Semi-finalized OFF amendment or revision proposals being run through the list for archive purposes is one thing, an expectation that every change discussion be copied to the list for review is not.

We need to be considerate to the fact that we are making gradual attempts to adapt the existing process to the way we want to conduct work.  Ask for something nicely, and we might just get it; push hard for a significant departure from the current ways of doing things, and the answer may simply be "no". 
IF the WG agrees with our recommendations to officially recognize GitHub repo as a venue for technical discussions, members who want to stay abreast of the OFF technical discussions will need to subscribe to both. And yes, members who just want to remain informed about what's happening (like e.g. WG3 Convenor) would likely remain subscribed to the mailing list only.  
 
> I guess it comes down to I have no idea what you mean by "changes"
that's not a "proposal". Maybe if you clarify that...

Anything that we discuss on the AHG list, or anything that we may discuss and develop on GitHub has to be presented to the WG if we ever expect the WG to act on it. The changes we discuss, whether big or small, need to be finalized as input contribution to the WG. It can happen either as a member contribution, or (as it often has been the case in the past with various items discussed on the AHG list) it can be presented as AHG input contribution - a formal document that needs to be reviewed and approved by the AHG, the same way we do it for the AHG report. This document is what constitutes a proposal, and it will need to be discussed on the mailing list. 

Thank you,
Vlad