Re: Straw-man charter for http-bis

["Robert Sayre" <[e-mail]>]

On 5/31/07, Roy T. Fielding <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> I am not going
> to support an IETF working group that says "nobody is allowed
> to do a better job describing HTTP than what is in our charter."
...
>
> If I make the real changes that are needed in draft form and submit
> them to the WG, then I will expect them to be evaluated without bias
> or the WG to be closed.  If the answer is "that's too much
> for me to review, so you aren't allowed to do that in the IETF"
> then I won't.  I will do it elsewhere and the IETF specification
> will become irrelevant.

I think application of forking pressure is OK. It is always present anyway.

I don't understand why the two approaches are mutually exclusive. I
think the best way to start is by doing exactly what has been done so
far. I agree with Roy that we shouldn't rule out large scale
restructuring at some point, but it might be better to let everyone
look at a few rounds of diffs before any major structural changes are
made. The issues list is already getting a little big.

>
> I don't hear anyone else saying that 2616 needs to be revised before
> 2617, yet you continue to take that as an assumption.

The order is irrelevant, and they don't need to be undertaken by the same group.

> 2616 doesn't *need* to be revised at all.

Disagree. The document is losing usefulness as a reference because it
is poorly structured, crawling with inaccuracies, and the net is full
of things that claim to be HTTP but aren't.

> 2617 desperately does need to in order
> to meet the IESG requirements.  Why is that unclear?

The requirements have been revisited.

-- 

Robert Sayre

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."