interoperability across our work - architectural "integrity"

[chaals]

This follows comments from @igarashi50 in #120

If we believe that a spec needs to enable an interoperable ecosystem, to what extent do we believe that the overall ecosystem should demonstrate some kind of architectural integrity?

I think the point is important. This is the fundamental reason we have the TAG, as one example. At the same time, we clearly don't believe that there is "one true architecture laid down" that we have to support for everything. The discussions and conflicts between e.g. XML and JSON as data formats, RDF and flatter approaches such as XML/JSON as data model formalisms, and so on have been painful over the decades but also I think helpful.

I think we make some adjustment or offer some flexibility for what different sectors actually want to implement, and we discourage the approach that some take of trying to force a split community through diverging approaches that end up incompatible.

This doesn't seem to be clearly reflected beyond the statement "there is one world-wide web", and I think we should have more than that.

I don't have any crisp phrasing to offer though :(

[cwilso]

Related: #13

[fantasai]

@chaals Partly in response to this and partly in response to #170, I added “technical soundness and architectural integriy” to the “Thorough Review” bullet point under Operational Principles. See 3ca3f10

Does this address your comment?

[chaals]

I think it notes that there is something happening, but it tells us nothing about what the vision is that drives (or should) that review. So I am not convinced it closes the issue. If we had a clear statement of design principles to point to, we might be there. But given the differing timelines of making things statements, I suspect we should leave this open until then.