From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Oct 06 1999 - 04:17:23 CDT
In <199910051249.OAA20214@rras.mro.man.de> Rolf Weber <Rolf_Weber@mro.man.de> writes:
>Charles Lindsey wrote:
>>
>> Because this present pass has already taken six months, and the change
>> suggested would take another six months.
>>
>I don't believe on this, because most of the disagreements are
>based on the questions whether to specify policy-requiremnents
>_at all_. When we decide to leave policies out, we could solve
>technical points (and that's our job) more in time - I'm pretty
>sure.
But we would spend large amounts of time discussing whether a particular
feature was technical or not. There is more to it than just "policy"
(which is a technical term defined in our current draft with a very
specific meaning). In RFC2119, applied with excessive zeal, it is
"interoperability" that is the test.
Take a couple of examples. The rule that the newsgroups line should fit
within 79 characters. Technical? Policy? Interoperable?
And then the rule (which we all agree to) that relaying agents MUST
establish the identity of the source and indicate they have done so by the
use of '/'. If that rule is not followed, nothing breaks, no article gets
lost, there is no interoperability problem - just millions of people
pissed off by spammers abusing open relays.
>But even if it would be time-expensive, it would be well spent
>time, because this is a chance to get a draft which would be
>worth called an _internet standard_.
We are currently at chapter six of our pass through the draft. There are
two large chapters left to go. We will get nowhere fast if we keep going
back to make major changes to chapters we have already passed over.
By all means reconsider such matters when the present pass is complete.
But note that there are also other things in the queue for consideration
then, such as cancel locks, authentication and the like.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506 Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5