EUnet has another choice -- they can register their complaint with the IESG.
As I keep pointing out, the IESG was responsible for the deletion of the
reference to MNEMONIC. Neither the MIME authors nor the working group
were responsible for this.
If EUnet manages to argue the IESG around to allowing the reference (I
think this is going to be impossible, but who knows) the reference can
always be inserted at the six month review point.
Be that as it may, there's nothing EUnet can say or do that is going to
change this in this working group. The IESG mandates as to the contents of
MIME stand and this group cannot change them. There can be as many SHOW
STOPPERS as you want; they are not going to be effective.
As I have said before, EUnet has two real choices. They can press the matter
with the IESG. Or they can get behind Keld's documents, nail down the
remaining problems with them, and get them worked through this group and onto
whatever track they need to be on. I prefer the latter because it gives me
the opportunity to be involved in the evolution of mnemonic, which is a
proposal I personally favor and want to work with and use.
The other alternatives are to continue yelling about this here. This is
going to be fruitless; in fact, it seems to be having a backlash effect
as it encourages alternative mnemonic proposals. I don't want two
mnemonics (or more), I want one. Two or more is completely defocusing and
I see big problems dealing with them. I predict that two or more will
rapidly translate to zero for most implementors.
The final alternative is to develop a MIME alternative. I don't much see
the point of this, since MIME is reasonably aligned with mnemonic and
there's no problem with simply registering mnemonic as a character set or
subtype or whatever. But I suppose a MIME variant with a changed
"minimum requirements" section would suffice and still be categorized as
a MIME alternative. I personally don't have a problem with this, but I
think it will be very bad politically and will end up being quite
counterproductive.
Ned