<div dir="ltr"><div style="" class="markdown-here-wrapper"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important">Thanks everyone for answering. Nice ideas (I still use classic encoding daily!), good news about spec comments being in Mantis. Leonard’s documents are great, reading them right now:)</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important">I thought about the “open GitHub” thing for a while. I want to emphasize that I’m extremely grateful to all the people that helped make X3D the standard it is today. Despite some issues, it’s still the <em>best</em> format for 3D data we have today, and it is open —- this is a great achievement. And I benefit from this fact on a daily basis, when developing my engine and games around X3D.</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important">At the same time, I want X3D to be more used by other people/software. The fact that ugly unspecified proprietary formats like FBX gain ground, and have sometimes better support in 3D authoring/rendering software than X3D… well, it’s troubling.</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important">With this introduction done, let me try to make some constructive comments:)</p>
<ol style="margin:1.2em 0px;padding-left:2em">
<li style="margin:0.5em 0px"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">I understand that the need to keep some things closed is necessary for some members, for some issues.</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">At the same time, this is some barrier for the public contributions.</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">Compare this with open-source software development —- if you <em>really</em> want to welcome the community input, you need to make your development public. This means making a <em>current</em>, bleeding-edge, version of your software available for testing. And this means opening a reliable channel to submit bugs/changes to your stuff.</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">That’s why GitHub is so popular. Because it’s technology (GIT, pull requests) promotes community contributions. (It’s not only GitHub/GIT, of course. You can more-or-less say this about any open-source software hub and version control system.)</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">Opening the membership to individual professionals, for a moderate price, is a great thing… but it’s not the perfect world. Again compare it with open-source software development —- if every potential contributor would have to go through a “member” process before even <em>seeing</em> the development version of the software… well, you would just have a lot less contributors.</p>
</li>
<li style="margin:0.5em 0px"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">So, one idea how you could “have a cake and eat it too”:)</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">GIT and GitHub allow you to reliably merge changes, 2-ways, between your repositories. So maybe:</p>
<ul style="margin:1.2em 0px;padding-left:2em;margin:0px;padding-left:1em">
<li style="margin:0.5em 0px"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">Make a public repo “X3D spec in progress (without any potentially-secret stuff)” on GitHub.</p>
</li>
<li style="margin:0.5em 0px"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">And keep secret (member-only) the “X3D spec in progress (<em>with</em> potentially secret stuff)”. When something “secret” is ready to be made public (after all, it’s a necessary step toward being part of the final X3D spec), then merge it from “secret” to “public” repo.</p>
</li>
<li style="margin:0.5em 0px"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">And the big advantage: the public contributions could be applied directly to the public repo. The public would have a “current spec version, as much as we can show”, to comment on and improve, in an open-source fashion (real issue tracker, pull requests and so on).</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li style="margin:0.5em 0px"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">I know that many standards have been developed like X3D, or in much more restricted fashion. As I said, welcoming input from individual professionals, and offering them membership for a moderate price (it’s 100 USD per year, as far as I see) is a visible and very appreciated gesture.</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">But, maybe we can make it better? I found two examples of standards (close to my heart and open 3D) that have specifications openly available in GitHub, by Khronos:</p>
<ul style="margin:1.2em 0px;padding-left:2em;margin:0px;padding-left:1em">
<li style="margin:0.5em 0px">Vulkan : <a href="https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Docs">https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Docs</a></li>
<li style="margin:0.5em 0px">glTF : <a href="https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF">https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">I don’t know are these the “latest” spec versions of Vulkan/glTF, possibly development on new spec features happens partially elsewhere. But I know I can fork these specs on GitHub, submit issues (bugs) there, submit pull requests (correction that can be easily applied).</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important;margin:0.5em 0px!important">This is a great feeling, and I would love X3D to be such open.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 1.2em!important">Thanks for reading:) Best regards,<br>Michalis</p>
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