What to do with the older CG?

[frivoal]

As noted in the charter, there was a previous effort to standardize extensions in the Browser Extension CG, which stalled for lack of engagement.

Though nothing has happened there for years, I'm still the chair of that CG. That doesn't mean a whole lot given that there isn't an active community there anymore, but I still have control over the CG's github repositories and its publications under github.io (Browser Extension spec, Native Messenging spec, meeting minutes…), as well as its twitter account.

Assuming this new attempt gets traction (I very much hope it does), I think it's worth thinking about whether this new CG wants to take over those assets, or if they should stay largely as is as a reflection of the prior attempt, but possibly with explicit pointers to where the new work is happening. Maybe we want to officially close the old group (instead of being permanently dormant), or maybe instead of creating this new group, the activity should be used to resurrect the old one? Relatedly, the old group has mailing lists. Should they be reused? Closed?

I'm in no way trying to challenge the creation of the new group or wrestle control. Just offering cooperation to ensure, if desired, smooth transition of the old assets.

[leggett]

I just joined the new group, so no thoughts on your questions.

I will say that having both groups marked as active was a bit confusing when I joined. I found the group via the list of community groups and wasn't sure if it was the Browser Extensions group or the WebExtensions group was the new group.

[dotproto]

Hey @frivoal, thanks for kicking off this discussion.

I don't want to speak for the other members, but a big part of why I thought we should create a new community group was to preserve the previous effort as is.

The genesis of this group was several different concurrent conversations between browser teams that lead to us collectively discussing and seeking alignment on how we could work together. This essentially required that we work through the chartering process and hold conversations that we didn't feel would be appropriate in public. As a result, integrating with the the Browser Extensions Community Group (BECG) felt to me like it would be a hostile takeover rather than an organic evolution of that group. In my view the BECG is an important precursor to this group's efforts.

At the moment my personal preference is to keep the two efforts separate but I'd love to hear what other folks think.

[frivoal]

@dotproto Thanks for the consideration.

I don't really think we can preserve the previous effort as is, as the previous effort is a thing of the past. It has visible created documents, controls a few urls / mailing lists / social media accounts, and probably still have a bunch of people that would receive notifications were we to send any, but it's all inactive and has been for a long time.

Having tried to get something like this going the last time around, it is completely evident to me that getting this on a good start would involve lots of private discussions between the key actors, so I am not surprised at all that from the point of view of external observers, this seems to spring into existence fully formed out of nowhere. The fact that this is presented as a new thing, with a clear "here's who we are and what we want to do" is great, and trying, as the first step, to try and morph the old group into being what the new thing wants to be would be unnecessary political complications. So I strongly encourage the new grorup to continue defining what it wants to be on its own terms, independently of what came before.

With that said, once the new group exists, the old one no longer really has a reason to continue. And to be honest, the old group is dead and has been for years. I don't think we should delete its history, because there are interesting things there, but if anyone wants to get involved and contribute to standardization of interoperable extensions, there's no question that the new group is the one they want to join.

So wouldn't see this as a hostile take-over, but as a defunct group finally having a worthy successor that it can transmit its assets to, get out of limbo, and finally get clean closure.

[dotproto]

In retrospect, I think when I wrote my last comment I misunderstood (or simply focused on too narrow an a part of) your original post, @frivoal. Re-reading both of your comments now, I think we're thinking along the same lines.

By "preserve the previous effort as is", I meant to +1 the suggestion to "officially close the old group (instead of being permanently dormant)" and to update the BECG's assets to "stay largely as is as a reflection of the prior attempt, but … with explicit pointers to where the new work is happening." To that end, I'd suggest the following:

• Update the READMEs in the browserext repositories to link to this repository, then archive them.
• Publish a blog post on the Browser Extension Community Group that links to the WebExtensions Community Group.
• Follow the guidance in the Community Group FAQ on how to close a group. (Note: you must manually scroll down.)
• Transfer the Twitter account credentials to the WECG chairs (@xeenon or myself).

I'd also like to suggest that you join our first public meeting on June 24th to discuss this further.

[ariasuni]

We need to redirect people from the previous CG:

• Update README (previous CG GitHub)
• Update previous draft spec to link to our group (GitHub repository)
• Contact previous CG so that they publish a blog post on their CG page

Edit: oops, I reread this issue too fast and missed the previous comment. Anyway, I think updating the spec is also worth it because you find it with a web search.

[dotproto]

@frivoal, any objection to us proceeding with the plan I described in my last comment?

[abitrolly]

I feel like there is an elephant in the old room that nobody talks about. :D Hi everybody.

Being open is hard, so it is good at least to hear that people (from browser groups) want to have private conversations. Was inability to discuss things in private, or being blamed for doing so, resulted in people losing interest and ceasing their activity in the old group?

The phrase that hits me is "try and morph the old group into being what the new thing wants to be would be unnecessary political complications". For me morphing the old group into being the thing that don't let things die is a good process. Otherwise what are guarantees that the new group won't die the same way? What really bugs me here are the "unnecessary political complications". That sounds more like conflicts of interests between lawyers than inability to get to the rational technical decision that will help to move extension writing forward.

Anyway, I am glad to see people here moving things. Hopefully everybody is funded and have fun. I am not funded, but my interest in this specific issue is in studying things or conflict that make groups fall apart (scratching my own itch of not being about to finish things that need more than one person).