Open Stack

On Tue, 2014-01-21 at 10:53 -0500, Doug Hellmann wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, January 21, 2014, Mark McLoughlin <markmc at redhat.com>
> wrote:
>         On Tue, 2014-01-14 at 09:29 -0500, Doug Hellmann wrote:
>         
>         > I would like to see an affirmative statement from the TC
>         like "We are
>         > planning to start dropping XML support in APIs during Juno
>         in order to
>         > focus our limited development resources" (or a later
>         release, or "we are
>         > going to keep doing XML whether we like it or not") posted
>         to the mailing
>         > list for feedback, rather than the open-ended "what do you
>         want" questions
>         > we've been posing.
>         
>         I'm generally against us closing doors and saying "we never
>         want XML
>         support, no matter how much work you're willing to do on it".
>         A ban on
>         XML or a "JSON is the one true representation" statement isn't
>         what
>         we're trying to achieve.
> 
> 
> I think we can be clear about the level of support we can sustain
> without being draconian. My point was just that we should always
> expect someone to say "yes, please keep XML support" if we ask it as a
> question. At the same time, saying directly that we don't
> require projects to support XML is not the same as forbidding its use.
> Our choice of phrasing will be important. 

Yep. Add:

  3) Be explicit that (new and existing) projects (or even new versions 
     of their APIs are (so far) only required to support a JSON
     representation

>         We want:
>         
>           1) Clear guidance to users that XML support is known to be
>         very week
>              and, due to lack of interest in developing and
>         maintaining it, XML
>              support could get worse in future releases. I'm thinking
>         XML
>              support off by default, warnings in documentation,
>         notices in
>              release notes, etc.
>         
>           2) An understanding that because of the lack of active
>         maintenance of
>              XML support, authors of new features can choose to
>         regress XML
>              support. Semi-working XML support can't be allowed to
>         hold up
>              progress.
> 
> 
> Is a semi-working API useful enough to even ship turned off by
> default?

Fair point - maybe "working enough to be useful to some, even if not
perfect" is a better way of putting it.

Projects are free to remove any features that have decayed beyond
usefulness because of lack of interest.

Mark.