Apr 18, 2018

Add new action items here.

AW: Well, it doesn’t look like Symphony will be joining the call, but I can summarize their position as I heard it from Lawrence this week: Symphony was interested in this working group partly because its charter included a goal to produce an open standard for a general application-container API specification. Because this group has said it’s not interested in that in the near term, then it’s less about producing an open standard and more about producing a published API for a single Symphony LLC product, something they’re less interested in (in part because it means opening the design of their own product up to an outside committee from which they’re otherwise not deriving benefit). What I suggested to Lawrence was that this group’s needs might be met simply by a commitment from Symphony to continue publishing its API and notifying the community of upcoming changes.

BI: That would probably work for us.

JS: Isn’t it also true that the APIs for Symphony protocol handler are not open/documented?

AS: Yes, but those are specific to Minuet, which is deprecated.

NK: What the working group gives us that that doesn’t is a greater separation of concerns between the design of the API and its implementation by Symphony’s product team, which is beneficial if Symphony Electron is just supposed to be one implementation.

AW: Maybe, but it’s also unusual to have a working group to define the requirements of a single company’s product.

NK: Fair enough. WGs usually for multiple interests doing multiple implementations. If it’s an API they own & implement as a feature of their product, it makes less sense.

AW: I agree. However, I think it’s a good idea for Symphony customers to make clear to Symphony what they want from them in terms of the openness of the API, documentation, notice of changes, etc.

JS: Does OpenFin feel like they have what they need without this working group to continue supporting Symphony?

NK: Well, that’s kind of beside the point. Because if Symphony doesn’t want to participate in the working group, keeping it going won’t require them to implement its requirements.

AW: Any objection to calling this the last meeting?

PM: Suggest reaching out to Colin Eberhardt about ContainerJS and Frank Tarsillo about OpenF2 to see if there’s interest in a more general container API specification process.

AW: Ok, I’ll do that and report back.