[tete]

> - "What is a Component (and Why)?" (WasmCon 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAACYA1Mwv4

At 18:00 the speaker states something like "It should not be Systems Interface but Standard Interfaces" which honestly sounds like a different project. As an implementer or even as just a user in general, can it be trusted that tomorrow it isn't something completely different? Seems like an odd standard to follow.

(EDIT and aside: Rereading this it reads more dismissive than I meant it. So if this isn't clear: I want WASI to succeed. I think having a widely used system interface is great, but I think many know standards that suffered from scope creep. And while big successful standards for better or for worse at least have a chance of surviving this, WASI as the 0.3 indicates is in its infancy. So I worry about it turning out bad, leading to people abandoning the idea altogether or the standard losing sight of its initial goal. So while this is criticism the only reason I bother to write it in first place is because I badly want it to succeed. I worry that if WASI tries to do too much at once - and I totally understand wanting to do that - it makes it less likely to be successfully implemented and thereby less likely to succeed as a standard.)

[syrusakbary]

If you are looking for a Systems Interface, I don't think the Component Model will be a good fit

[spankalee]

The speaker is right. Why should "system" interfaces and interfaces from other components ever be fundamentally different?

[tete]

I get that. That's not my criticism. My criticism is that you can do say that about many things. With that argument you can essentially encompass everything, which is cool in a way, but also means that the scope is at least bigger than the original - hence what the speaker says.

What I worry about here is that when I think about implementing it the scope will likely grow as well. And while I very much get the wish to encompass things in a standard (I think everyone who ever wrote any kind of specification knows that) a standard doing that extension when the initial goal of being a (commonly used) system interface isn't achieved - at least that's how'd interpret being 0.3 now - then what if that scope extends like that. Will we see full implementations?

To me it seems like maybe it would have made sense to separate that a bit. Something like a WASI based standard. Or something else. The fact that you almost need to change your name like this indicates that you went quite a bit away from the initial goal and doing that before a 1.0 seems like a very early point to get of course for any project. Sure sometimes you find out that you have looked at it from the wrong angle, but honestly this doesn't look like it. This looks a lot more "this is something we can reuse".

[airstrike]

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