I like the idea of reworking the Last Call. I've never responded to one because I don't believe I've got the authority to speak on the topics from an implementation perspective, and question 3 implies that the Last Call is for folks writing implementations.
Clarity that answers to other questions aside from Q3 (on the text of the standard) and/or other questions from a user perspective would definitely encourage me to respond to >0. Dan On Tue, 6 Jan 2026, 15:23 Daniel Gultsch, <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I saw a talk by Sophia Longwe, who I believe works at Wikimedia > Germany, at 39C3 (Chaos Communication Congress). I saw the talk in > person, but there is a recording of it here: > > https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-who-runs-the-www-wsis20-and-the-future-of-internet > > The talk is a rudimentary overview of how the different bodies that > "steer" the internet work t ranging from UN committees and ICANN down > to mere mortals such as us. The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) was > not called out specifically, but our colleagues at the IETF and W3C > were mentioned. > > In her talk, she criticized the lack of participation from "civil > society" in standardization work. She attributed this partially to > high barriers to entry at IETF events (high costs, fancy hotels) and > said (I’m paraphrasing) that it’s basically just rich FAANG employees. > Some of that doesn’t exactly match my own experience at the IETF, but > I don’t think any of what she said was in bad faith. I hope to meet > her in Vienna (IETF126) to discuss some of these things in person. And > who knows, maybe she is right. > > Anyway, long story short, this got me thinking about our processes > here at the XSF (which, again, she didn’t mention at all): > > I think the XMPP Standards Foundation is in a unique position where > many of our members can be described as "civil society" - people who > might describe themselves as activists or promoters of XMPP rather > than developers. (And/or people who do software development for a > living, but whose jobs are unrelated to XMPP and who joined the XSF > more in the capacity of a user.) > > At the same time, I’m observing that a lot of our Last Calls (and > standards work in general) have few participants, at least relative to > our overall membership numbers. Furthermore, I've heard criticism that > the XSF doesn’t take the concerns of some minority groups seriously > enough. (Which may or may not be true; I don’t want to take sides on > that at this point.) > > This leads me to a question: Can we kill two or three birds with one > stone here? Can we either rephrase some of the questions in the Last > Call or add new ones that explicitly invite feedback from "civil > society" (for lack of a better word)? > > I just want to get the discussion started, so I don’t have a final > list, but the questions could go in a direction like this: > > * Would you use this feature if it were implemented in the XMPP client > you currently use? > * Do you think an implementation of this feature could negatively > impact your community? > * Does this improve (make easier) the work you do in your community? > > Cheers, > Daniel > _______________________________________________ > Standards mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >
_______________________________________________ Standards mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
