OCWG Meeting № 9 Recap

[devhelpr]

Meeting № 9 Summary

Here's a transcript of the meeting, if you'd prefer to read.

Here's a recording of the meeting, if you'd prefer to watch.

Meeting 9 Summary

Major Discussion Points:

• Legal Licensing and Patents: Aaron raised questions about the legal umbrella under which OCWG operates, including licensing, contributor agreements, and patent issues. The group discussed the need for legal formalization to ensure openness and avoid patent infringement issues.

  • Summary: The group needs to establish legal structures, such as a contributor license agreement and patent policies, to formalize contributions and maintain openness.

• Open Canvas Format: Max provided an overview of the fundamental structure of Open Canvas, focusing on items (or nodes) and resources. They discussed how resources might be stored (in JSON, locally, or remotely) and referenced. The idea of JSON namespaces to prevent collisions between tools was introduced.

  • Summary: A conceptual foundation for Open Canvas was established, defining nodes and resources and discussing how to store and reference these elements across applications.

• GLTF Comparison and Lessons: Aaron and Max drew parallels between the Open Canvas format and GLTF, particularly on how external resources are handled. The team discussed adopting similar conventions for storing and referencing resources.

  • Summary: GLTF’s method of referencing external resources was discussed as a potential model for Open Canvas, ensuring interoperability across tools.

• Rotation and Transforms: Aaron brought up the importance of including fundamental transform properties like rotation, position, and scale in the base spec instead of treating them as optional extensions.

  • Summary: There was a consensus that transforms (like rotation) should be in the core specification, with defaults for applications that don’t support specific transforms.

• Relations and Arrows: The group discussed how relations between nodes (such as arrows) are stored, focusing on the difference between visible elements (nodes) and conceptual relations. They debated how best to represent arrows and other relationships.

  • Summary: Relations, such as arrows, can be handled as conceptual relationships or visible elements, with flexibility to accommodate different canvases.

• Namespace and Extension Handling: Max highlighted the need for a solution to handle multiple extensions with potentially overlapping property names. The group discussed various approaches, including JSON-LD and GLTF’s method of using vendor prefixes.

  • Summary: A solution is needed to manage multiple extensions without name conflicts, with GLTF’s vendor prefix model suggested as a possible solution.

Action Items:

1. Investigate legal frameworks for OCWG, potentially using W3C’s model.
2. Reach out to legal experts on open-source licensing to ensure OCWG is on solid legal footing.
3. Integrate JSON schema work into the current OCWG spec and align it with recent discussions.
4. Research JSON-LD further to assess its applicability for handling namespaces in OCWG.

Takeaways:

• Legal and patent considerations are critical for ensuring OCWG’s openness and long-term viability.
• The group is leaning toward adopting aspects of GLTF’s resource handling for Open Canvas.
• Transform properties like rotation should be in the core spec to ensure consistency across canvases.
• Managing extensions and avoiding conflicts between properties will be key as OCWG evolves.