Proposed plan for Selenium 5

proposals/selenium5-plan.md

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+# Plan for Selenium 5
+
+Selenium needs a major release to highlight new features, and ensure all bindings are being managed consistently.
+As such, the plan is to do a minimal focused Selenium 5 release making sure everyone is on the same page. 
+
+## In scope
+These items must be done before release
+- New high-level async/event APIs (consistent concept across bindings, idiomatic per language) in all bindings
+- Selenium Manager released with stable API, independent of Selenium version
+- Established cross-bindings guidelines for how Selenium API is implemented with BiDi
+
+## Out of Scope
+These items may be done after Selenium 5 is released
+- Implementing all Selenium APIs with BiDi commands
+- Deprecating CDP code
+- Major breaking changes
+
+## Principles
+
+### Backwards compatibility
+The goal is minimum annoyance for users to upgrade
+- Users should not need to make significant changes to their test code
+- Existing Selenium deprecation policy applies to Selenium 5: only remove code that was deprecated for > 2 previous minor versions.
+- Orchestration changes and dependency changes that cannot be deprecated may be acceptable
+
+### BiDi implementation
+BiDi is not a new Selenium API, it provides better tools for implementing and extending the existing API
+- No references to BiDi in the API (casting or namespacing)
+- Users can access BiDi implementation code, but it is clearly marked as internal usage / likely to change
+- Enabling BiDi cannot break current Selenium API (requires graceful fallback)  
+- Maintain consistent approach across bindings
+
+## Implementation
+The specific details for how these features are implemented and are managed across bindings will be managed
+by GitHub Issues. Any issues with disagreements or that needs additional discussion or approval will be labeled as `A-needs-decision`
+and discussed at the next TLC meeting.