This is the other way of reading it: He's essentially saying, "Once this is shipped, the cat will be out of the bag and we will not be able to put it back in, so if you need the cat for something, you should do it now." That's not what is traditionally meant by "ultimatum," because an ultimatum implies that you want someone to do something and will do something else to injure them if they fail to meet your demands.
Your cat analogy still sounds like an ultimatum to me: threatening someone with not being able to work with the cat unless they acquiesce to their demand to work with the cat on a very short timeframe.
Here's how the email fits your definition of an ultimatum:
Demand: that the working group suggest changes to the proposal "RIGHT NOW."
Injury if they don't comply: Google will ship the API anyways and freeze it so the working group can't later change it without breaking compatibility with a major web browser.
> We've been working on Shadow DOM in the open for 2 years
There are references in the thread to a f2f that happened a week ago, but this implementation has been evolving for a Long time now. The most vocal respondents only seem to be concerned about the phrasing, and haven't indicated publicly that they have anything technically substantive to add to the discussion anyway.
Thanks - I did continue to read and looked into the spec bugs. I guess I didn't consider Boris, Dimitri, or Tab as being all that outspoken about the so called 'freeze' - one acknowledged the poor word choice, but that's about it.
No, that is not the form of an ultimatum. In an ultimatum, the threat will only come to pass if the target does not comply with the demand — it's an either-or situation, with the threat used as leverage to get what you really want. Google isn't saying, "Either suggest some stuff or we will ship the Shadow DOM API. We don't want that to happen, right?"
The message was of the form of an advisement rather than an ultimatum. It is similar to "Hey, everybody, I'm putting these cupcakes out. Get them fast because when they're gone, they're gone." I don't think anybody would hear that and say, "Hey, stop throwing around ultimatums." The "threat" is not a threat — it's a heads-up about something that is going to happen, so that people have a chance to respond adequately.
You can still say that Google was not considerate enough in what they did, but there is definitely a reading of the message that is not an ultimatum.
You're still confusing two constructions. There's no "or" in Google's message. They're doing to do what they're going to do, regardless of anyone else's actions. They're giving advance notice, but not an opportunity to change their plan.
It's the same distinction as between these two sentences:
"Give me your wallet or I'll drop this piano on you."
"I'm going to drop a piano, you might want to get out of the way."
The big difference here is "something is going to happen" vs. "something is going to happen to you". A threat or an ultimatum implies that you're the specific target of the action. An advertisement or notification implies that someone is going to take some action that may possibly affect you, but isn't specifically directed at you.
The boundaries get fuzzy when billion-dollar corporations get involved because they tend to wield a lot of power. However, most people would say that if you're a startup and a competing startup says "We're going to launch a new feature; better get ready", that's not an ultimatum. (As startups go, that's pretty damn polite.)
It reads as an advisement, but it really is an ultimatum. the analogy you provide about advisements is that something is going into effect which the adviser has no power over. However, Google does have the choice whether or not this goes through. It's not the weather, it's not a god, there are people that make decisions and they can be modified. That is where the ultimatum is, just disguised as an advisement.
You criticized the analogy and ignored the entire rest of the text which made my point entirely clear. Why do people do this?
OK, fine, here's another analogy: "I'm going to be leaving in 10 minutes, so if you have any questions, you'd better ask them now." The thing being "threatened" here is entirely in the speaker's control — he could opt not to leave. So is that an ultimatum? I don't think it would generally be viewed that way. Why? Because there is no threat being used as leverage to get something — the speaker (i.e. Google) isn't really making demands here, but rather stating what it's going to do. The thing being "threatened" will happen regardless; this is just an advisement that it will happen so that you can respond accordingly.
Put another way, the "threat" component of an ultimatum can't be unconditional. It is conditioned on noncompliance. AFAIK that's the defining characteristic of an ultimatum. It is possible to read this as being a conditioned threat, but it seems entirely reasonable to me to read it more in the spirit of "I'm going to do something, so here's your chance to get ready." It's entirely possible that Google doesn't care if it receives any further input (which is theoretically the "demand" in this ultimatum).
What's being threatened is that something will be shipped and frozen without review, input, or comment, if comment isn't made immediately - not that something is going to be shipped.
Exactly. Not shipping this feature hidden behind a flag is an ultimatum.
If the feature is hidden behind a flag, then only developers experimenting with the feature will turn it on an use it, but they will never venture to make a production app since they can't expect their users to also have that flag turned on.
If the flag is shipped in the on position, developers will take that as a sign to start shipping features using it to production.
