Re: Interest in reviving WG on FTP(maybe ext?)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Friday, July 10, 2009 14:08 -0400 "William F. Maton
Sotomayor" <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Jul 2009, tom.petch wrote:
> 
>> In October last, there was a thread on
>> "Subject: Followup on IETF72 discussion of FTP protocol
>> extensions and updates".
>> 
>> I cannot recall seeing any conclusion to it; may be this time?
> 
> Ah, thanks for that pointer.  I was in DUblin and had not
> realized at the time that there were discussions in
> progress...Alas, that was prior getting involved in the issue
> in the first place.
> 
> I don't see one in the archives either.
> 
> I think a Bar BoF may be planned for it though?

With the understanding that I have been, and remain, sympathetic
to getting a WG spun up if there is interest, the conclusion in
Dublin and elsewhere was that there really wasn't critical mass
to do this.  Critical mass would require people who were willing
to actually work on, review, and, where appropriate, implement
each other's documents, not just present ideas and hope that
others sign off.  There have been a number of drafts posted
relevant to FTP.  Some seems obvious to me (like the extension
registry), others may be seriously bad ideas, and most lie
somewhere in between.  

If that critical mass exists, then someone needs to get to work
on a charter, perhaps using the one that a couple of us put
together a year ago as a starting point.  If it doesn't, then
writing and posting more FTP extension drafts is probably a
waste of time -- given the number of proposals, if there isn't
enough interest to put a WG together, then it would be hard to
argue that there is sufficient interest in FTP extensions in the
community to justify standardizing anything.

That is just my opinion, but I think it is a reasonable summary
of where things stood a year ago.  I'm not convinced that
anything has changed.

    john