Bringing the OpenRosa APIs to a Ratified, 1.0, state!

[Anton de Winter]

Dear OpenRosa Community,

In preparation for the MHealth summit in early December, I'd like to make a push to getting our APIs finished and out the door.  As such, I'll be sending out regular emails over the coming days/weeks to initiate voting on specific APIs, calls for discussion and making edits to the actual documentation as the content evolves. We've come very far as a community and I think we should brag about it at the mhealth summit.

The 5 APIs we'd like to have complete by the Summit date (5-7 December 2011) are:

• HTTP Request API
• Form Discovery (Listing) API
• Authorization API
• Form Submission/Overwrite API 
• MetaData Schema

(See the list all the OR APIs here )

  

I'd like to start the process with the MetaData API since it appears to be closest to complete, and will be sending out a separate email kicking things off shortly.  

We'll be having a reading/discussion period of no less than 24 hours before the vote for any API starts, to give people a chance to voice any concerns.  I'll be proactively trying to drive discussions to a conclusion as best I can.  I would argue we are trying to get to "good enough" and not perfect with these 1.0 so we can prove as a community we can ship an API.  We can also amend these APIs in the future.  

Once voting starts the API will be considered 'locked' until voting is complete.  

Voting rules can be found here.

Essentially, anyone who implements OpenRosa technology is eligible to vote.   We need at least two +1 votes (and no -1 votes) for an API to be ratified.  

Anyone is welcome to discuss the APIs and/or voice their concerns

The list of voting members can be found here.  Please update the page if you know of someone who should be on there!

Knowing that the above 5 APIs will soon be put to vote, please feel free to check them out ahead of time and start discussions on any of them.   I'll be pushing to get them knocked off one by one, but discussion on any of them is always welcome!

Thanks,

Anton

--
Anton de Winter

Dimagi Inc

(617) 692 0786

529 Main St

Charlestown, MA

02129

[Jørn Klungsøyr]

Hi,

 

Sounds good to push this forward!

 

Just a quick one regarding eligibility for voting.

 

Would it not be better that each organization/group  has a vote, rather than each developer/person – if a software does not below to an organization/group – one of the main contributors could represent.

 

Further, the sentence “Essentially, anyone who implements OpenRosa technology is eligible to vote. “ is unclear – do you mean JavaROSA or standards?

 

Would it not be better to say that groups that have implemented or are implementing OpenROSA standards are eligible? And should working with JavaROSA have anything to say?

 

I would also recommend that an email is sent to the javarosa-developers mailing list.

 

Best

Jørn

 

____________________________________________________________________________
Jorn Klungsoyr
openXdata - Centre for International Health, University of Bergen, Norway
www.openxdata.org / www.cih.uib.no / www.openrosa.org / www.open-mobile.org
Mobile: +4791365731, Skype/GoogleTalk: jornklung Alternative email: jorn.kl...@gmail.com
Post: Postboks 7800, 5020 Bergen, Visit: Årstadveien 21, 5th Floor, Bergen
                       ------¤¤¤¤------

[Anton de Winter]

Thanks for the response Jørn, replies in-line:

Would it not be better that each organization/group  has a vote, rather than each developer/person – if a software does not below to an organization/group – one of the main contributors could represent.

I think the thinking here is that since our community is still relatively small it makes more sense to have individuals cast a vote. In our case these individuals usually have a lot of experience in working with these specs and have the best sense of what will work well in the future.  I'd like to hear what other members of the community think about this however...

 

 

Further, the sentence “Essentially, anyone who implements OpenRosa technology is eligible to vote. “ is unclear – do you mean JavaROSA or standards?

Sorry for the vagueness!  It's cleared up here https://bitbucket.org/javarosa/javarosa/wiki/Voting%20Rules (in Voting Membership Requirments).

I think the spirit of the law here is that if you implement OpenRosa technology in an active project(s) you should get a vote.  This includes JavaRosa powered products, ODK,  OpenRosa API compatible products, OXD, etc.

 

 

Would it not be better to say that groups that have implemented or are implementing OpenROSA standards are eligible? And should working with JavaROSA have anything to say?

See previous comment (yes :) )

 

 

I would also recommend that an email is sent to the javarosa-developers mailing list.

Good call, I'll send one off shortly.