Date: Thu, 02 Jan 92 14:41:41 EST
To: ietf-822(_at_)dimacs(_dot_)rutgers(_dot_)edu
From: atkinson(_at_)itd(_dot_)nrl(_dot_)navy(_dot_)mil ( Randall
Atkinson)
Subject: Re: IANA & Review Processes
Well I'm much less confused about the IANA's role now, ...
Unfortunately, you only THINK you are less confused. It turns out that
I've been receiving some corrections, from IAB members. We all are
facinated that my model is significantly far off the base, given my
membership in the IESG.
I think that it is highly undesirable for new character sets (for
example) to be added merely by an arbitrary person sending them to the
IANA and them being approved or published or sanctioned by the IANA
without some IETF/IESG review.
This is just the sort of reason that my model was too simple. Put simply,
the IANA manages the assignment of number-/name-space resources and that
includes enforcing whatever management policies should apply. (Or, at
least, this is my current sense of its job, from this morning's
background exchange; and that provides a better fit for some issues
that I had not included in forumating my original note.)
If it is possible for someone to simply send mail and get ISO-646-G
(hypothetical example :-) blessed for use with RFC-MIME then I predict
an explosion of registered character sets. I think most of us believe
this would be a very undesirable result.
Could RFC-MIME be worded in such a way as to force future extensions
through some IETF/IESG/IAB review process ?? Or is it already doing
this and I'm confused about some other item ??
In my opinion, RFC-MIME does need just the sort of tightening that you
cite. I don't see this a major wording changes. (And if I can clear
my desk of some other, pesky items, I'll send Nathaniel some candidate
text.)
Dave