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RE: WG Review: Enhancements to Internet email to support diverse service environments (lemonade)

2003-01-30 11:08:07
Executive Summary: Accept John's second proposal.  That is, take the charter as 
is, and insert a May 2003 deliverable of "lemonade Architecture, IESG and IETF 
Review, and Possible Rechartering".





Now that I'm clearing out my mailbox...

1) When I saw the flood of messages, and the nature of the objections, I 
wondered if anyone actually read the charter.  When I saw that a very old draft 
got posted, my faith in people was restored.

2) Pete - I'll take the fall for not posting the last revision for review.  
There were about 4 changes from the last, publicly reviewed charter to the one 
submitted to the IESG in the last go round.  Each of those changes seemed minor 
(like what the acronym meant).  However, taken collectively, they are a larger 
leap.

Mea Culpa :-(


3) Initially, we were a bit leery about putting any changes to IMAP within the 
lemonade charter.  If we get more participation from the broader IMAP 
community, then I would be more comfortable with the idea.  That said, 
negotiable profiles do seem sensible.

4) Our original thoughts vis-a-vis IMAP was NOT to formally trim IMAP.  It was 
to (gulp) add a method for alternate retrieval (CHANNEL) and to have more 
relevant status information (e.g., media size).

5) For better or worse, lemonade has provided a forum (and one could say an 
impetus) for the discussion of some taboo topics.  For example, what started as 
a very limited scope need, server-to-server bulk notifications, has gotten 
people to actually WRITE the requirements, protocol issues, security issues, 
and privacy issues around notification in general.  This helps get the 
discussion out of the darkness of "doing that is bad, trust me; if you were 
knowledgeable you would understand" into the light of "read this paper - it 
explains the issues."  That alone is worth its weight in gold.

6) I have no problem narrowing the scope of the charter.  I have no problem 
expanding the text of the charter to more accurately reflect the scope (e.g., 
refine the language of bullet 4 to explicitly say "IMAP Profile").  I am leery 
of adding IMAPv5 or IMAPlite to the charter.  I really would like to the work 
group finish in a bounded time period.

7) As we are approaching our second year of BOF's and planning for the work of 
the WG, I think that we can make progress by taking John's second proposal.  In 
short, take the charter as is, and insert a May 2003 deliverable of "lemonade 
Architecture, IESG and IETF Review, and Possible Rechartering".  I would offer 
that starting with the architecture, instead of the requirements, would most 
likely result in a poor result.  We should push out the subsequent milestones 
appropriately, and mark them as tentative.

--
- Eric Burger
Co-chair, lemonade BOF

-----Original Message-----
From: John C Klensin [mailto:john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 5:01 PM
To: ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com; Pete Resnick
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; iesg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: WG Review: Enhancements to Internet email to support
diverse service environments (lemonade)




--On Wednesday, 29 January, 2003 13:06 -0800 
"ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com" 
<ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com> wrote:

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.

Well, as it happens the charter that was posted to
ietf-announce wasn't the one the IESG approved either. It is
one from quite a few versions back.

I've attached the current charter below.

Ned, this one is _lots_ better.  I'll leave sorting out how the 
wrong version got posted to the IESG and the Secretariat.  But 
my primary concern (and one of those on which Pete and I are 
apparently in agreement) remains:  when I read "enhance...IMAP", 
I don't infer "narrow the protocol for use in this environment" 
or "specify a way to use the existing protocol to accomodate 
these needs".  Instead, I infer "new feature", "new capability", 
and "putting more stuff into the protocol".  I think there is 
considerable resistance in the community to making IMAP bigger 
-- while the four messages that have shown up on the list are 
not much of a sample, I observe that at least three of them have 
included "make it smaller, not larger" positions.

If the community believes all that has been said in Atlanta and 
on the "problem-statement" list about raising architectural 
issues early in the life of a WG rather than hitting the WG 
during Last Call (and you can be assured that several of us will 
scream loudly if this WG emits large extensions to IMAP without 
really clear justification), then charter-time is the time to 
fix this one.  If the intent that all of us have is the same 
--which I suspect to be the case-- then all that is needed is to 
fix text to make that intent clear to the community and to WG 
members who have not participated in the previous discussions. 
That should be helpful for the Chair(s), for the ADs and for the 
community.

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.

I regard this as being up to the chair of the group. The
charter that wasn't posted was iterated on by both the chairs
and the IESG.

Then this is an objection to the textual form of the charter 
version you posted as well as to the form the Secretariat 
posted.  If the "extend IMAP" issues are settled, then let's get 
that fact  documented in the charter to prevent later surprises 
and unpleasantness.   If they are not, then let's either

      * Hold a review of those issues by some body whose
      responsibility is to the Internet, and Internet mail,
      infrastructure is taken broadly, not just accomodating a
      few new capabilities.  Have that review before the WG is
      initiated, and make its conclusions binding on the WG.
      
      * Provide, in the charter, a community review point at
      the initiation of significant extension work on IMAP or
      anything else(were such work to be initiated), so that
      we don't get a pushback situation well into the 11th
      hour.

regards,
    john






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