
Transparency and the AMP Project - lukestevens
https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13597
======
whalabi
Pretty dismal communication from @cramforce.

Seemed like a political response to the questions raised, and I don't think
"making the web competitive to native apps and walled gardens" is the real
goal (err, Google happens to control the world's biggest mobile platform and
it's app ecosystem)

I think Google have just realised that if they create an obviously closed
platform, a la Apple, everyone will resist it and it will fail or be
supplanted by a more open one.

What gave Android power? The thousands of other companies that jumped aboard.
And Google won all the spoils. Billions of devices running Android, with
Google search by default.

Make it "open", but control it. Win.

------
eveningcoffee
One thing is what some technical lead thinks about the project. Another thing
is its real purpose, its strategical value.

------
lukestevens
I've been engaging with AMP Tech Lead @cramforce about the serious concerns
many have about the nature of the AMP project.

His response is perhaps the most direct explanation of the motivations behind
the AMP I've seen to date. You can read the thread, or read his post here:

===

 _I first want to acknowledge that we are learning how to run such a big open
source project and so many things are being figured out. E.g. we are currently
rewriting our Governance guidelines to answer many of your questions more
directly._

 _Having said that, I think amp-stories is a great example of our process. The
Intent to implement (ITI) was send here in September and it has since been
worked on with a set of publishers producing content to test out what the team
working on code was producing. In that feedback loop between publishers and
devs the product evolved. You can find the traces in dozens of issues in this
project. It was "announced" last week. But only to people who weren't paying
attention to this project._

 _In AMP for email we took a different path (post ITI only on public
announcement) but we are working with a product team (GMail) that is building
a product they way they want to and we respect that. The ITI was posted last
week and has not yet been approved (so is in active discussion). The scope of
the ITI is not whether GMail launches the product, just whether the AMP
project accepts the responsibility of maintaining the E-mail specific fork of
AMP._

 _For your (4) and (5) questions: The discussion is happening here with the
scope of AMP. We cannot and will not extend the scope of this GitHub project
to proprietary integrations of AMP. That may be frustrating but it is the way
it works and a very common setup for open source projects. Similar with (6):
You can argue here that AMP for email is a bad idea. The outcome would be if
you convince us that we would deny the ITI and the main AMP repo would not
accommodate the project. I can 't answer the questions for the various
integrations of AMP since (by design) AMP doesn't mandate how partners like
Baidu, Twitter, Microsoft and Google use AMP._

 _I 'd like to avoid taking email out of the equation for the other points.
Both because I'm not an email expert and the answers aren't the same as for
the web in any case._

 _First I 'd like to acknowledge that we are learning how to communicate about
AMP. I don't think answering individual posts at this time makes sense.
Although I have engaged in plenty of debate about them on the orange website
and Twitter._

 _We were worried about the web not existing anymore due to native apps and
walled gardens killing it off. We wanted to make the web competitive. We saw a
sense of urgency and thus we decided to build on the extensible web to build
AMP instead of waiting for standard and browsers and websites to catch up. I
stand behind this process. I 'm a practical guy._

 _Now, and this should answer your question (7) we are increasingly pivoting
towards taking the learnings of AMP and bringing them into web standards. The
Feature Policy work is the primary focus of this effort and you will see
significant increases in velocity in that over the coming months._

 _I said above and in my talk at AMP Conf that we aren 't idiomatic about
AMP's implementation. With JS in AMP the "thingness" of AMP. But that is just
the first step. Our goal was always to create a well lit path towards a web
that can compete with native apps. We are hoping and working on making that
path broader and not requiring people to use AMP. As said above: Work is under
way and will accelerate._

 _To (10): As said above: We are working on revising the project governance to
make it clearer how decisions are made beyond me being BDFL._

 _I will moderate this thread according to our code of conduct. In general, my
statement from above remains that there is an open invitation to join our
weekly design reviews (but put your topic on the agenda; and adhere to the
COC)._

 _I don 't think that the discussion here will lead to everybody being happy,
but I think my post give a good perspective as to the future plans. We are in
this to make the web win. We might disagree on the means, but we can agree on
the outcome we are all aiming for._

