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RE: Last Call: draft-reschke-rfc2731bis (RFC 2731 is Obsolete) toInformational RFC

2009-09-09 11:37:56
Hi,

I find the title irritating. I had to go open the draft to know what
it was obsoleting. 

Reading the abstract, I find that the draft proposes declaring RFC2731
Historic (not Obsolete)
So the title is actually misleading. 

But wait. According to the heading, if approved, this draft will
obsolete RFC2731. Which are we doing Historic, or Obsolete? (can you
do both simultaneously?)

In actuality, what this draft is doing is transferring responsibility
for further development of the "Encoding Dublin Core Metadata in HTML"
to Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. 

Neither RFC2731 nor this draft make it clear whether RFC2731 was a
snapshot of work that was done by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
and simply published as an Informational draft to inform the IETF, or
whether RFC2731 was contributed to the IETF with the intent of
developing an IETF standard (and subsequently failed). There is almost
no discussion of why RFC2731 is being declared obsolete/Historic and
why further development has moved to the Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative.

I had occasion to coordinate the transfer of responsibility from the
IETF to IEEE for some work, and had to spend significant effort
working through the copyright issues and the migration issues
(RFC4663). The work being transferred in RFC4663 is an IETF standard,
whereas RFC2731 is only Informational, so that could make a lot of
difference, but there is simply no discussion at all of copyright
issues and migration issues. And the reasons why RFC2731 is not still
considered valid (just an earlier version), or why this step to
declare the RFC Historic is being done are extremely light. Is it to
prevent it being used because this old version and the updated work
cannot coexist? or do we just not like this one any more? 

Is it because the effort to standardize failed? (Did the Initiative
want to keep editorial control, and when they found out they couldn't
if it was standard, they took their ball and went home? Is this draft
to provide a pointer to the Initiative because providing this pointer
in an RFC sort of implies that IETF endorses the Initiative as the SDO
for setting a standard(?) for this metadata? (I notice there are
Editorial notes to remove some text; are all mentions of the
Initiative being removed? I couldn't tell the scope of the Editorial
note. It might be better to see an updated version that has been
cleaned up, so there are no misunderstandings about what should be in
the published RFC.)

RFC2731 contains perl code. They are published with this text that
appears to be a license: "They may be
   taken and freely adapted for local organizational needs, research
   proposals, venture capital bids, etc."
If RFC2731 is obsoleted, does this in any way affect the license and
the legal rights of implementers of RFC2731? This is not discussed.

I find this draft not very satisfying because it simply ignores so
much.

In security considerations sections, it is acceptable to say "hey, we
considered this and reached the conclusion that authentication and
authorization and other security features are not needed." It is not
considered acceptable to simply omit any discussion of the security
considerations.

I don't want new boilerplates, but there are a bunch of issues related
to this document that are simply not discussed. I think this document
should include (very small) sections that reflect that copyright
issues have been considered; that authors rights in RFC2731 have been
considered; that migration issues for implementers of RFC2731 have
been considered; that licensing issues for the contained code have
been considered. None of this has been documented, so a reader cannot
know whether these have been considered and not documented, or simply
overlooked.

I do not think this document is ready for publication as an RFC.

David Harrington
dbharrington(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net
ietfdbh(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net
dharrington(_at_)huawei(_dot_)com


-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-announce-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org 
[mailto:ietf-announce-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of The IESG
Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 9:31 AM
To: IETF-Announce
Subject: Last Call: draft-reschke-rfc2731bis (RFC 2731 is 
Obsolete) toInformational RFC

The IESG has received a request from an individual submitter 
to consider 
the following document:

- 'RFC 2731 is Obsolete '
   <draft-reschke-rfc2731bis-02.txt> as an Informational RFC

The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and
solicits
final comments on this action.  Please send substantive 
comments to the
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org mailing lists by 2009-10-07. Exceptionally, 
comments may be sent to iesg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org instead. In either case,
please 
retain the beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

The file can be obtained via
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-reschke-rfc2731bis-02.txt


IESG discussion can be tracked via
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=vie
w_id&dTag=18624&rfc_flag=0

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