Re: WG Review: Enhancements to Internet email to support diverse servic

John and I are in a great deal more agreement that I first suspected.

On 1/29/03 at 3:06 PM -0500, John C Klensin wrote:

> But, Pete, for reasons you presumably understand, "profiles" (note 
> plural) gives me as much anxiety as "lets add lots more excrement to 
> this protocol".
Yes, if the result of this WG is multiple different profiles of IMAP, 
I too would consider that a bad thing.
> > Yes, it is certainly true that there are a couple of extensions to 
> > IMAP being proposed, and I don't doubt that they should be met with 
> > scrutiny.
> One of them is potentially very heavyweight.  As you point out, 
> there are other solutions to it, but the charter doesn't appear to 
> prevent the WG from inventing some wildly new, and complex, way to 
> handle the issue.    If it has already been decided that the WG 
> won't go down that path, then the charter should say so. If it has 
> been agreed that the WG isn't going to do that unless it turns out 
> to be absolutely necessary, then the decision point about 
> "absolutely necessary", and another opportunity for community review 
> if it is determined to be necessary, should be reflected in the 
> milestones.
I think I agree. I don't know that the solution I referred to is a 
done-deal, so I think spelling out the constraints in the charter is 
important.
In that vein, I want to take back something I said earlier:

> > I think there should be a great deal of pressure on this group to 
> > *not* bloat IMAP, and in fact rather to shrink it. However, there 
> > is nothing in the proposed charter (or in the mind of this 
> > particular member of that proposed WG) that should give you the 
> > impression that the intention is otherwise.
I now see that the charter *as posted* might very well leave that impression.

> The charter draft, as written, pretty clearly would permit the WG to 
> consider and adopt some strategies that I won't find architecturally 
> acceptable and that, I gather, you wouldn't either.
I agree. And unfortunately, I think this is due to a serious problem 
about which I'm quite distressed:
The proposed charter contained in the announcement is *not* the 
proposed charter worked out on the LEMONADE BOF mailing list. Not 
even close. The one on the list went through several revisions to 
include specific language in the work items about profiling of 
existing protocols, and that language has been removed in what was 
posted here. The one on the list was tailored specifically to avoid 
having the working group add to existing protocols (with IMAP as only 
one example) unless absolutely necessary, but rather to profile 
existing protocols if that solved the problem. The present charter 
gives the incorrect impression that the desire of the group is simply 
to add extensions, specifically to IMAP.
First, a process point: If these significant changes were made by the 
IESG to what was submitted, these should have been brought back to 
the list for approval. Though RFC 2418 says that charter review is 
only between the prospective chairs and the IESG, it also says that a 
charter is a contract between the working group and the IETF. As a 
member of this proposed WG, I'd like to know what I'm being asked to 
be involved in. I think it was irresponsible to post this charter 
without buy-in of the folks who are supposed to be working on this.
Second, I think John's concerns are right on the money, and that's 
why I pushed as hard as I did to include the profiling language in 
the work items. If we can solve the problems without extending, 
that's what we should do. If we need extensions to solve a particular 
problem, that better end up being part of a required profile.
> If no one intends to go in those directions, let's rewrite the 
> charter to make that clear.  If the WG needs to look in those 
> directions without expecting to go there, then let's put that in the 
> charter, with provision for a plenary discussion or an IETF Last 
> Call _before_ the in-depth protocol work has been done, so we don't 
> end up with late-breaking "surprise" effects.
Yup. And I think I will join in voicing objection to the charter as written.

> Finally, if the intent is really to prune, then I'd expect pruning 
> to appear prominently in the description.  Instead, both the title 
> and the text seem to point mostly to enhancements.
I want to be careful here: The *intent* of the proposed WG is to fix 
some problems with using the current protocols in particular 
operating environments. To accomplish this, it is my sincere belief 
that pruning current protocols (and more specifically, IMAP) is part 
of the solution. That doesn't mean that "pruning" needs to be in the 
title, though it certainly should appear in the work items. For that 
matter, it doesn't mean that IMAP should really appear at all in the 
charter, as far as I am concerned. The charter that I was part of 
creating didn't mention IMAP in the work items, in my mind because 
the WG should not be required to use IMAP if POP or some other 
existing protocol would do.
pr
--
Pete Resnick <mailto:presnick(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com>
QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102