At 02:07 PM 1/30/02 -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
> > and no Provisional field be added to the registry without
> >either IETF consensus or IESG approval.
>
> ... but folks who have expressed an interest in the provisional registry
> aspects have argued that not allowing a reasonably full coverage all
> headers, good and bad, would weaken the informative purpose of the
> provisional registry.
I am assuming that either IESG or a consensus process will approve
additions to the registry for the "informative" purpose of documenting
pre-existing practice. Jacob Palme's documents would make a good
starting point for this. The trick is to document existing practice
without making it too easy to stake a claim for poorly chosen headers
that don't exist yet.
I guess I'm having difficulty buying into your (apparent) premiss here,
that the existence of a provisional registry will initiate a land-grab for
header names.
I really should back off and see what other people think, but there's one
more viewpoint I'd like to offer: it could be argued that the existence of
an open registry would have the opposite effect; i.e. it could encourage
developers with half-baked ideas to come together, pool their thoughts and
come up with something more fully-baked?
To emphasize this, I'd be tempted to add something to the provisional
registry disclaimer, along the lines of:
[[[
Registration as a Provisional Message Header does not imply any kind
of endorsement by the IETF, IANA or any other body.
The existence of any provisionally registered header name does not
represent any kind of claim or priority for a corresponding entry
in the normative registry.
]]]
... It's much easier to get IESG
to blanket approve an occasional batch of registrations for the sake
of documenting existing practice than it is to get IESG to remove
or warn about individual fields.
OK, I won't push on that.
...
Mulling some more, I do see a potential problem that you may be alluding
to, and have another thought. Allowing provisional registration of non X-
headers might be seen as tacitly acknowledging that it's OK to use them
without standardization, regardless of what the protocol spec may say.
How about changing the rules for provisional registration to allow all
comers for header field names beginning with X-, and require IETF consensus
or IESG approval for anything else? (I'd need to check that this has the
desired effect for HTTP and News.)
#g
------------------------------------------------------------
Graham Klyne Baltimore Technologies
Strategic Research Content Security Group
<Graham(_dot_)Klyne(_at_)Baltimore(_dot_)com> <http://www.mimesweeper.com>
<http://www.baltimore.com>
------------------------------------------------------------