PSA: Reducing web compatibility risk.

[Mike West]

Hey folks,

Given the current global crisis, Blink's API owners would like to err on the side of stability and consistency to avoid placing additional burdens on web developers. To that end, we will be conservative about breaking changes in the short-term, and do not plan to approve intents that pose web compatibility risk to existing sites for the time being (e.g. deprecations/removals or behavioral changes). We intend to revisit this policy on a monthly basis, and will update this thread as things develop.

Intents that are already approved are still approved. We plan to take a pass through them to reevaluate risk, and will reply to their Intent to Ship threads on blink-dev@ if we have concerns.

Thanks for your understanding. Stay safe, stay home, and wash your hands!

-- The API owners

P.S. This doesn’t affect Intents to Prototype or Experiment. We encourage you to continue landing code behind flags, including for potentially breaking changes.

[Mike West]

Hey folks,

We’ve kept our eyes on the COVID-19 situation as it develops worldwide. It's clear that “normal” is going to mean something different for maintenance, testing, and development going forward. At the same time, developers seem to be adapting to the new status quo, and a blanket ban on deprecations and removals no longer seems appropriate.

With that in mind, and noting that intents approved today won’t hit stable until mid-to-late August, we intend to resume evaluating intents that pose web compatibility risk for existing sites on a case-by-case basis.

Thanks again for your understanding. Take care of yourselves.

-- The API owners