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JSON-LD WG

Minutes for 2025-08-28

Present
Benjamin Young, Ted Thibodeau Jr., Ivan Herman, Pierre-Antoine Champin, David I. Lehn
Regrets
Gregg Kellogg
Chair(s)
Benjamin Young
Scribe(s)
Pierre-Antoine Champin, Benjamin Young
Agenda
https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/04e937c0-e751-4c7e-9ba4-5782e0b3d272/20250827T120000/#agenda
Topics
  1. Announcements and Introductions
  2. CBOR-LD
Benjamin Young: 11:55 AM
Benjamin Young: 11:55 AM

Topic: Announcements and Introductions

Pierre-Antoine Champin is scribing.
Benjamin Young: Re TPAC, we will probably not be enough on site to make it matter
... so it is unlikely that Gregg or I will be there
... We are scheduled on Tuesday for 2h (link above), no joint sessions planned.
... we are planning on keeping this timeslot -- check how it works for your timezone.

Topic: CBOR-LD

Benjamin Young: We discussed it last week; we need staff help to move the current report into a CG report.
Ivan Herman: I looked at it; we now have a CG draft report, this should be enough for the charter.
... It would be better with a final report, but that should not be blocking.
... That's what I put in my PR on the charter.
Benjamin Young: In your PR, you removed some text about CBOR-LD report
Ivan Herman: I think we should stick to the minimal
Benjamin Young is scribing.
Pierre-Antoine Champin: For the JSON-LD deliverables, we should not put the exclusion drafts
... there is no exclusion draft on the JSON-LD 1.1 in CBOR
... as if it were a new document
Ivan Herman: I think for the time being what we have now is fine
... it will go to the strategy team first
... and they can tell us what we need to change
... my reasoning was that the exclusion draft is about IPR issues from the membership
Pierre-Antoine Champin: Fwiw, I've had this discussion when we were rechartering the RDF & SPARQL WG
... our charter looked like this one
... and we were asked to modify it
... and change the history to make the new version look like it's a brand new document
... I agree with you, ivan, let's await feedback from the strategy team
Ivan Herman: The current text of the charter basicalyl says "VC needs CBOR-LD so we will make it".
... This is a call for problems.
... The proposed text gives more general arguments. Wes helped me put them together.
... Help from a native speaker is welcome.
Ted Thibodeau Jr.: I will look at it
Benjamin Young: I'll take care of the merge conflict

Subtopic: https://github.com/json-ld/json-ld-wg-charter/issues/12

Ivan Herman: The charter still says that we will meed on a per-need basis
... we should change this to "weekly"
Benjamin Young: I will take care of that

Subtopic: https://github.com/json-ld/json-ld-wg-charter/issues/14

https://github.com/json-ld/json-ld-wg-charter/issues/14 -> Issue 14 Liaisons to YAML and CBOR communities (by iherman)
Ivan Herman: There are communities maintaining YAML and CBOR, we should liaise with them.
... But I don't know exactly who these communities are.
... I leave it to someone who knows, but they should be there.

Subtopic: https://github.com/json-ld/json-ld-wg-charter/issues/15

https://github.com/json-ld/json-ld-wg-charter/issues/15 -> Issue 15 Similar formats (by iherman)
Ivan Herman: I am not sure what "similar formats" are targetted, but I anticipate pushback
Benjamin Young: This was part of the discussion about renaming the WG. Different other potiential formats were mentioned.
... But we can now remove it.

Subtopic: charter facilitator

Ivan Herman: The new process requires that new charters have a facilitator
... I volunteer to be this one.

Subtopic: https://github.com/json-ld/json-ld-wg-charter/issues/2

Ivan Herman: The "normalization" item in ou-of-scope makes no sense, the work has been done in another group
... we can keep "linked data signature", it is indeed out of scope
... I also remember some discussions with DanBri during TPAC about the integrity of context retrieved.
... We should mention that somewhere.
Ted Thibodeau Jr.: For liaison pursuit -- YAML -- https://yaml.org/spec/1.2.2/ --> https://yaml.org/spec/1.2.2/ext/team/
Ted Thibodeau Jr.: CBOR -- https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8949 --> https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/cbor/about/
Pierre-Antoine Champin: I had similar discussion with people working on Security with Simone
... so +1 to mention it in the charter

Subtopic: safe mode

Benjamin Young: "Safe mode" exists in several implementations, but was never formally defined
... some groups (e.g. VC) are relying on it
... this should be mentioned in the charter as well
David I. Lehn: I implemented the safe mode, I can contribute to spec text
... and tests
Pierre-Antoine Champin: I just realized something from ivan's PR
... it says that the JSON-LD 1.2 specification will need to align with RDF 1.2
... gkellogg proposed a couple weeks ago that we should not set that goal
... because there are already things that need to be done for JSON-LD that are not as deep as aligning with RDF 1.2
... his thought was that maybe the alignment happened at a JSON-LD 1.3 or later
... to prevent us being inhibited from shipping by the larger alignment work
... especially since RDF 1.2 is not shipped yet
Ivan Herman: I think we should not do that
Pierre-Antoine Champin: I think the alignment would still happen, but later
Ivan Herman: But won't that cause that compatibility to happen 4 years from now?
... because we're only chartered to ship JSON-LD 1.2
Pierre-Antoine Champin: Could we have RDF 1.2 compatibility in scope, but not have it in the first round of deliverables?
... my understanding is that we could ship a simpler 1.2 sooner
... and then ship a 1.3 within our upcoming 2 year charter
... the idea was to release early and often
Ivan Herman: On issue #15 I copied a "Tentative Deliverable" section
https://github.com/json-ld/yaml-ld/issues/15 -> CLOSED Issue 15 char encoding: UTF-8 only? (by VladimirAlexiev) [spec]
... this text is new to me
... that would, I think, let us work on it
... the problem I have is that the chartering process has become so legalistic in the past few years
... that I have no idea about the reactions...
Ted Thibodeau Jr.: +1 Tentative deliverable (does allow for a full REC to be completed)
Pierre-Antoine Champin: I see your point
... there has also been discussion around everygreen processes not working
... but instead are shipping specs more often
... there are groups working like that
... I will check to see how we might do that
Ivan Herman: I'm fine if we have a chat about how that might work
... this tentative deliverable looks like it will get us closest to that now
Ted Thibodeau Jr.: I just wanted to encourage ivan and pchampin to join the process CG...if you have time
Ivan Herman: >_<
Ted Thibodeau Jr.: I understand, but it is a great place to get involved in the process improvements
Ivan Herman: Is it really such a hard thing to do it as described in the charter now?
... the other two deliverables don't seem too huge
... so is it so daunting to do it as is described?
Benjamin Young: Our biggest daunting task is that Gregg will eventually step down as main editor
... so keeping the list of things to add small enough would make it easier to get something delivered
... also, we don't want to be blocked by the RDF & SPARQL WG's progress
Ivan Herman: Another technical question: we have some fair idea of what JSON-LD 1.2.
... I suspect everything can be transferred to YAML-LD without problem.
... wes-smith, do you think transferring them to CBOR-LD would be easy?
Wesley Smith: I would not expect it to be too difficult, but I need to look into more details.
Ivan Herman: Bigbluehat, I agree with the point you make about Gregg.
... We should reorganize the charter, and put RDF 1.2 alignment in the "tentative deliverable" sections.
Benjamin Young: If RDF 1.2 ships soon enough, nobody will prevent us from including it in whichever version of JSON-LD we have at the moment.
Ivan Herman: I can try to take a go at it once the other issues are addressed.
... I will reorder the points in the scope section, to make it clear that alignment with RDF 1.2 is in a second time.