Re: [Cbor] Mirja Kühlewind's Block on charter-ietf-cbor-01-01: (with BLOCK)

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

Hi Mirja,

good points.  Details below.

> On Jun 26, 2019, at 17:27, Mirja Kühlewind via Datatracker <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Mirja Kühlewind has entered the following ballot position for
> charter-ietf-cbor-01-01: Block
> 
> When responding, please keep the subject line intact and reply to all
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> 
> 
> The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-cbor/
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> BLOCK:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Not sure if my two points justify a block, so I'm happy to change my position
> if other ADs tell me to, but I'm also not certain if I want to go for "No
> Objection".
> 
> Here are my points:
> 
> 1) First on this:
> "After that, the CBOR working group will monitor issues found with the CBOR
> specification and, if needed, will produce an updated document." This intention
> seems to contradict the idea of an Internet Standard in RFC2026 a bit:
>   "A specification for which significant implementation and successful
>   operational experience has been obtained may be elevated to the
>   Internet Standard level.  An Internet Standard (which may simply be
>   referred to as a Standard) is characterized by a high degree of
>   technical maturity and by a generally held belief that the specified
>   protocol or service provides significant benefit to the Internet
>   community."
> Maybe this is nit-picking but if the group is not sure if there are further
> issue, one should probably simply not push for Internet Standard…

Of course the group is sure about that!!!1one

Some STD documents do have updates (say, RFC 791 is updated by RFC1349, RFC2474,     RFC6864), but I would actually also feel better without this apparent escape hatch.  We do want to get this right!

> 2) I find the later part of the charter rather generic (starting which "There
> are a number of additional CBOR tagged types..."). I also don't really
> understand the difference of "General purpose" and "Internet-wide". These are
> two different aspects for me that don't exclude each other. I would rather like
> to see a charter that actually limits the technical scope rather than talking
> about a generic process (that may or could be or is applied in other groups as
> well).

My fault.  This was specifically about CBOR Tag definitions, until we noticed that we might be having some glue/housekeeping like the CBOR sequence document.  But really, this is almost all about CBOR Tag definitions.

General purpose vs. Internet-wide: Not all usage of CBOR occurs on the Internet, so there is a difference, but yes, these generally will overlap.  (Example for non-Internet usage: CBOR can be a great log file format.)

So when is a Tag spec in scope:  When we expect a general purpose and/or Internet-wide usage of the Tag (or other CBOR specific housekeeping document like a media type definition).

Grüße, Carsten