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Re: Fwd: I-D ACTION:draft-klyne-msghdr-registry-02.txt

2002-02-11 18:24:23

I don't think an RFC is needed for provisional registration (an RFC would
normally get it into the "full" register - modulo some careful wording in
the case of non-stanrads RFCs, perhaps).

But if you are saying "no provisional registration without an Internet
Draft", then that is an argument to which I might be persuaded (since I
would regard Internet Drafts as the normal route anyway). Indeed, that is
what I actually suggested way back during Graham's first draft.

that's pretty much what I had in mind.  publishing an I-D is a pretty
low-overhead mechanism, and it serves the purpose of making the draft
proposals accessible, and I don't see why we need a different mechanism.

Certainly being in a provisional registry should imply

1. This header is likely to go into experimental use, so expect to see it
in the wild.

seems like an over-statement.  I don't think it means anything more than
someone has made a proposal, and it's being reviewed.  certainly it's no
indication that the field will be widely deployed or that implementations
should have to deal with it (other than to ignore it, which is normal
behavior).
 
I could see having a separate list for each of mail, http, and news, but
I disagree that it's a good idea to let each WG be the sole reviewer of its 
own fields.  WGs that are focused on a narrow topic (say, how to do
fax over email, or how to do printing over http) have shown a significant
ability to be naive about the broader implications of their proposals.
Extensions of the email protocol need to be reviewed by a community
of email experts, not just experts in the field for which the extension
is being proposed.  Similarly for http and news.

The you are proposing a huge change to the present IETF procedures.
because current practice is that the IETF appoints WGs to do a job, and
they get on and do it. 

I don't think it's a huge change.  In other cases a WG that's defining
a new item in the reigstry still has to go through the procedure.  
e.g. if a WG defines a new content-type then the content-type still 
has to be reviewed by the normal process for content-types. (often
this is done long before the WG gets consensus on the work as a whole)
The review for the registry typically looks at different things than the 
WG review.  And when one WG does something that impacts another WG's 
work it's not at all unusual for IESG to tell the second WG to review 
the first WG's proposal.

And they have publicly available specifications and
publicy available mailing lists for those who want to be involved.

WGs tend to be narrowly-focused, but when a WG's work impacts the work
of other WGs, or of parties outside the WG's interest area, there is a
need for that WG's work to be reviewed outside the WG.  Sometimes this
happens because of explicit coordination between WGs, sometimes it 
happens during Last Call, sometimes it happens because IESG directs one
WG to review another's work.  But cross-group review is becoming more and
more important all the time.

Keith

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