wayland-protocols scope and governance
Jonas Ådahl
jadahl at gmail.com
Mon Jun 17 07:55:16 UTC 2019
On Sun, May 05, 2019 at 08:41:27PM -0400, Drew DeVault wrote:
> Here's an updated governance document for everyone to consider. Changes
> from the first version:
>
> - Use wayland-devel instead of a dedicated mailing list
> - Use Gitlab for reviewing new protocols
> - Extend discussion period for governance amendments from 30 days to 60
> - Permit either 1 or 2 points of contact for a wayland-protocols member
> - Clarify who's affected by the cool-down period after a failed
> membership removal vote
>
> I chose not to change the wording of the xdg namespace definition,
> despite Daniel's objection. I couldn't come up with a wording that I
> think would make everyone happy - feedback welcome. Under Daniel's
> proposed wording of "catch-all window management", a case is easily made
> for wlr-foreign-toplevel-management:
>
> https://github.com/swaywm/wlr-protocols/blob/master/unstable/wlr-foreign-toplevel-management-unstable-v1.xml
>
> I expect this would be controversial. Or perhaps it wouldn't be, and
> would fit into this namespace, but would just be NACK'd by some folks.
> Depends on how strongly integrated desktop folks want to gatekeep the
> XDG namespace. Thoughts?
>
> wayland-protocols governance
>
> This document governs the maintenance of wayland-protocols and serves to outline
> the broader process for standardization of protocol extensions in the Wayland
> ecosystem.
>
> 1. Membership
>
> Membership in wayland-protocols is offered to stakeholders in the Wayland
> ecosystem who have an interest in participating in protocol extension
> standardization.
>
> 1.1. Membership requirements
>
> a. Membership is extended to projects, rather than individuals.
> b. Members represent general-purpose projects with a stake in multiple Wayland
> protocols (e.g. compositors, GUI toolkits, etc), rather than special-purpose
> applications with a stake in only one or two.
> c. Each project must provide one or two named individuals as points-of-contact
> for that project who can be reached to discuss protocol-related matters.
>
> 1.2. Becoming a member
>
> a. New members who meet the criteria outlined in 1.1 are established by
> invitation from an existing member. Projects hoping to join should reach out
> to an existing member asking for this invitation.
> b. New members shall write to the wayland-devel mailing list stating their
> intention of joining and their sponsor.
> c. The sponsor shall respond acknowledging their sponsorship of the membership.
> d. A 14 day discussion period for comments from wayland-protocols members will
> be held.
> e. At the conclusion of the discussion period, the new membership is established
> unless their application was NACKed by a 1/2 majority of existing members.
>
> 1.3. Ceasing membership
>
> a. A member may step down by writing their intention to do so to the
> wayland-devel mailing list.
> b. A removal vote may be called for by an existing member by posting to the
> wayland-devel mailing list. This begins a 14 day voting & discussion
> period.
> c. At the conclusion of the voting period, the member is removed if the votes
> total 2/3rds of members.
> d. Removed members are not eligible to apply for membership again for a period
> of 1 year.
> e. Following a failed vote, the member who called for the vote cannot
> call for a re-vote or propose any other removal for 90 days.
>
> 2. Protocols
>
> 2.1. Protocol namespaces
>
> a. Namespaces are implemented in practice by prefixing each interface name in a
> protocol definition (XML) with the namespace name, and an underscore (e.g.
> "xdg_wm_base").
> b. Protocols in a namespace may optionally use the namespace followed by a dash
> in the name (e.g. "xdg-shell").
The usage of a dash instead of underscore is what the name as well as
file name should use. The underscore is for protocol interface, requests and
events only.
> c. The "xdg" namespace is established for protocols useful for implementing
> desktop-like systems.
Usage in only 'desktop-like' systems is not how xdg based protocols are
used today, so this definition is incorrect to begin with. A better
definition might be
c. The "xdg" namespace is established for protocols letting clients
configure surfaces as "windows", allowing clients to affect how they
are managed.
> d. The "wp" namespace is established for protocols generally useful to Wayland
> implementations (i.e. "plumbing" protocols).
> e. The "ext" namespace is established as a general catch-all for protocols that
> fit into no other namespace.
>
> 2.2. Protocol inclusion requirements
>
> a. All protocols found in the "xdg" and "wp" namespaces at the time of writing
> are grandfathered into their respective namespace without further discussion.
> b. Protocols in the "xdg" and "wp" namespace are eligible for inclusion only if
> ACKed by at least 3 members.
> c. Protocols in the "xdg" and "wp" namespace are ineligible for inclusion if
> if NACKed by any member.
> d. Protocols in the "xdg" and "wp" namespaces must have at least one open-source
> client implementation & two open-source server implementations to be eligible
> for inclusion.
> e. Protocols in the "ext" namespace are eligible for inclusion only if ACKed by
> at least one member.
This effectively means that any member can add any protocol under the
"ext" namespace without any limitations. Is this really the intention
here?
> f. Protocols in the "ext" namespace must have at least one open-source client &
> one open-source server implementation to be eligible for inclusion.
I see the point of this, philosophically, but is it really a restriction
we want? Lets pretend some proprietary compositor shows up and wants to
collaborate developing some kind of protocol that'd fit into the "ext"
category. Maybe there are open source clients who are interested in this
functionality, or maybe they provide their own proprietary client; would
we really want to keep them out instead of working together?
The availability of an "open source implementation" is also somewhat
vague; does a "dummy implementation" count, or how fully featured must
it be to be considered "good enough" for this requirement to be met?
>
> 2.3. Introducing new protocols
>
> a. A new protocol may be proposed by submitting a merge request to the
> wayland-protocols Gitlab repository.
> b. Protocol proposal posts must include justification for their inclusion in
> their namespace per the requirements outlined in section 2.2.
> c. An indefinite discussion period for comments from wayland-protocols members
> will be held, with a minimum duration of 30 days. Protocols which require a
> certain level of implementation status, ACKs from members, and so on, should
> use this time to acquire them.
> d. When the proposed protocol meets all requirements for inclusion per section
> 2.2, and the minimum discussion period has elapsed, the sponsoring member may
> push their changes to the wayland-protocol repository.
> e. Amendments to existing protocols may be proposed by the same process.
Is it really necessary with a 30 days minimum for amending existing
protocols? For introduction of new ones, I see the point, but especially
for non-controversial amendments (e.g. bug fixes) to unstable protocols,
it seems a bit excessive.
We could, however, maybe we should add a similar requirement for
declaring a protocol "stable".
>
> 3. Protocol adoption documentation
>
> 3.1. Adoption website
>
> a. This section is informational.
> b. A website will be made available for interested parties to browse the
> implementation status of protocols included in wayland-protocols.
> c. A statement from each member of wayland-protocols will be included on the
> site.
> d. Each protocol will be listed along with its approval status from each member.
> e. The approval statuses are:
> 1. NACK, or "negative acknowledgement", meaning that the member is opposed to
> the protocol in principle.
> 2. NOPP, or "no opposition", meaning that the member is not opposed to the
> protocol in principle, but does not provide an implementation.
> 3. ACK, or "acknowledged", meaning that the member supports the protocol in
> principle, but does not provide an implementation.
> 4. IMPL, or "implemented", meaning that the member supports the protocol and
> provides an implementation.
> f. Each member may write a short statement expanding on the rationale for their
> approval status, which will be included on the site.
> g. A supplementary list of implementations will also be provided on the site,
> which may include implementations supported by non-members.
>
> 3.2. Changes to the adoption website
>
> a. This section is informational.
> b. A new protocol is added to the website by the sponsoring member at the
> conclusion of the discussion period (section 2.3.c).
> c. During the discussion period (section 2.3.c), interested parties may express
> their approval status on the Gitlab merge request. The default approval
> status for members who do not participate in the discussion is "NOPP".
> d. Members may change their acknowledgement status or support statement at any
> time after the discussion period (section 2.3.c) has closed by simply pushing
> their update to the wayland-protocols repository.
>
> 4. Amending this document
>
> a. An amendment to this document may be proposed any member by
> submitting a merge request on Gitlab.
> b. A 30 day discussion period for comments from wayland-protocols members will
> be held.
> c. At the conclusion of the discussion period, an amendment will become
> effective if it's ACKed by at least 2/3rds of wayland-protocols members, and
> NACKed by none. The sponsoring member may push their change to the
> wayland-protocols repository at this point.
There are a few places that mentiones "pushing" to the repository. For
changing changes to the adoption website/database it seems like a
reasonable thing, but for protocol addition and amendments and amending
this document, let's just use merge requests directly so that we can
make use of CI to ensure things passes checks before reaching the master
branch.
Jonas
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