Parse through ION/Sidetree backlog

[decentralgabe]

There are a lot of issues in the DIF repo: https://github.com/decentralized-identity/sidetree-reference-impl/issues

Which of these should we bring in? Are there any that are higher priority for us?

[decentralgabe]

cc: @thehenrytsai @csuwildcat could use your help/guidance seeing which of these issues we'd like to pick up

[thehenrytsai]

Skimmed through the list and most of the issues are still relevant/applicable.

I'd be happy to sit down with you and @csuwildcat to triage and prioritize.

But the biggest ticking time bomb to me is this from the ION repo: decentralized-identity/ion#304

If the issue description is true, the current implementation of ION might cease to work soon in the worst case.

As a side note, it is equally triage the list of issues in https://github.com/decentralized-identity/ion/issues, they are probably a bit more noisy because most of them are not filed by me.

Also, I actually don't know the context of why this repo is created in the first place, I thought we should be contributing to the main repo from DIF as much as possible to avoid the risk of code divergence?

[decentralgabe]

Also, I actually don't know the context of why this repo is created in the first place, I thought we should be contributing to the main repo from DIF as much as possible to avoid the risk of code divergence?

A few thoughts...

1. More philosophical, but I don't feel that standards organizations are well suited to develop and maintain software. They're set up for specifications and test suites. This is fairly evident if you look at the W3C and most of DIF, save for the Sidetree project.
2. We have our own delivery goals and timelines, independent of DIF. Keeping the code within our control allows us to move at our pace and put in features we need without widespread consensus (as long as we stay compliant with the spec).
3. We want to build and maintain our own artifacts, and not need to rely on DIF artifact publishing. This necessitates some version of our own code, specifically when there need to be code changes that integrate well with our infrastructure (e.g. swapping out a DB module).