From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Thu Jun 24 2004 - 20:18:09 CDT
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> Bruce Lilly said:
>
>>Henry Spencer wrote:
>>
>>Henry,we've been over this many times before.
>
>
> Yes we have, and you have repeartedly refused to listen to what other
> members of this list have been saying. That is the reason for the
> "many times".
Excuse me, but I have indeed listened, and what I have heard was infantile
shouts of "we can do whatever we want". And many people (Ned Freed, Mark
Crispin, and others, as detailed in references supplied) have pointed out
that this WG does not have such latitude; that it is required by charter
to produce a document for the Standards Track, which means that it must pass
IESG muster, which in turn means that it must respect backwards compatibility
of the existing Internet infrastructure, and that this WG has no authority
to tinker with the Internet Message Format per se (or with MIME, or with
IMAP, etc.). And I would point out that I have been saying pretty much the
same thing all along, that I am quite content to proceed on the basis of
producing a Standards Track document which has at least a semblance of hope
of passing IESG muster (which your draft does not have), and in accordance
with the directions given more than 15 months ago by the WG co-chairs; it
was not I who raised this matter of attempting to tinker with RFC 2822
definitions yet again.
>> A message is a message, and all
>>messages
>>need to be able to have common components (including the Subject
>>field)
>>interpreted in a common way,...
>
>
> Yes, but there is no law of the Universe that says News has to follow
> exactly everything in RFC 2822.
All messages need to be handled by common UAs and access protocols, and
such UAs and protocols need to have a single definition of syntax and
semantics of common message fields, such as Subject. It is not acceptable
to require UAs and protocols to "guess" which rules of syntax and semantics
apply to a particular message.
> BUT there are some features of RFC 2822 that just will not work in
> News (and some of them never will). So we have had to be selective.
> otherwise establisheL and widely-deployed
In your haste you seem to have neglected to finish your sentence.
>> Aside from IMAP, there are
>>common UAs that handle news and mail, and such UAs use common code to
>>handle the common message format.
>
>
> So agents that want to handle both news and mail will have to aork
> within the intersection of RFC 2822 and our draft.
No. There are existing agents and protocols that depend on the explicitly
stated fact that news articles use RFC 822 format and as such are messages,
capable of being handled *as* messages. In referenced WG messages, I have
pointed to statements made by Mark Crispin and others that any product of
this WG that fails to account for backwards compatibility will not pass
IESG muster. Mark also had some helpful and appropriate ways to deal with
issues arising from broken implementations and "baby programmer" mistakes.
>>In short, you're asking if we have the authority to redefine RFCs 822
>>and 2822. The answer should be obvious. That's not in our charter,
>>and
>>is managed by a separate IETF WG.
>
>
> Nobody is proposing to alter RFC 2822
Attempting to redefine the Subject field is exactly an attempt to infringe
upon RFC 2822 and its cognizant WG. RFC 850 adopted RFC 822 format,
specifically mentioning use of Subject as defined in 822 as a replacement
for the erstwhile "Title", and clearly accepting RFC 822 as authoritative.
> The scope of RFC 2822
> is clearly set out in its introductory section, which clearly refers
> to "electronic mail".
The introduction is not the scope, and the text therein mentions a general
framework under which the format was developed (indeed the very same text
was in RFC 724, which predates Usenet). The format was explicitly adopted
by RFCs 850 and 1036, as well as by other applications which use that
message format.
> Therefore, it is not binding upon us,
Our charter is binding, and that charter calls for a successor to RFC 1036,
which explicitly and clearly states that RFC 822 is definitive. Moreover,
we are bound by direction from the WG Chair, and last year our Chair specifically
stated that our work was to be based on RFC 2822 and MIME.
>>Not just mail, compatibility with any other application of the common
>>message format (mail certainly being the most widely used). The
>>changes
>>redress issues arising out of RFCs 850 and 1036, both of which were
>>quite
>>clear about the adoption of the common message format and that the
>>defining
>>RFC (822 at the time) had precedence in the case of conflicts.
>
>
> No, the wording of RFC 11036 was quite muddled and self contradictory
> at that point.
There is noting muddled or self-contradictory about the text (I not in passing
that once again you have made a claim without one shred of supporting
evidence):
" The primary consideration in choosing a message format is that it
fit in with existing tools as well as possible. Existing tools
include implementations of both mail and news. (The notesfiles
system from the University of Illinois is considered a news
implementation.) A standard format for mail messages has existed
for many years on the Internet, and this format meets most of the
needs of USENET. Since the Internet format is extensible,
extensions to meet the additional needs of USENET are easily made
within the Internet standard. Therefore, the rule is adopted that
all USENET news messages must be formatted as valid Internet mail
messages, according to the Internet standard RFC-822. The USENET
News standard is more restrictive than the Internet standard,
placing additional requirements on each message and forbidding use
of certain Internet features. However, it should always be possible
to use a tool expecting an Internet message to process a news
message. In any situation where this standard conflicts with the
Internet standard, RFC-822 should be considered correct and this
standard in error.
"
That is clear, reasonably concise, and deserves to be repeated (with
updates, such as revising 822 to 2822, and mentioning MIME) in the
RFC 1036 successor which we are supposed to be producing.
>>That has also been asked and answered before. For two decades, news
>>has
>>intentionally used the common message format.
>
>
> No it has not.
See the text quoted above -- it is quite clear that the message format
has been adopted, and the reasons are clearly stated.
> So forget RFC 1036. It is dead. We are writing its succcessor.
According to the RFC index, it is still in effect. And if we're writing
a successor, why have you eliminated the clear, concise, and highly
instructive text quoted above?
>>The "news format is not an instance of the message format" and "we can
>>make any damned changes to any standards we please" horses have long
>>been
>>dead. Please stop flogging them.
>
>
> No, those horses are very much alive. We are charged with writing the
> new Netnews standard. We need to follow preceding standards
> "responsibly", not "blindly".
Evidently you did not pay attention to what Mark Crispin, Ned Freed, and
others have told you, and apparently you have not reread their apropos
remarks even though references to them have been recently provided here.
It appears that you just don't "get it".