Re: Straw-man charter for http-bis

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

On 01/06/2007, at 8:05 AM, Paul Leach wrote:

> Sometimes, the best is the enemy of the good. I think this is one of
> cases. As all good engineers should, I have great emotional  
> sympathy for
> Roy's approach of producing the best possible HTTP spec, but while a
> brand-new, easy-to-implement-from HTTP/1.1 spec would sure be  
> wonderful,
> if it isn't very likely to get done, then it isn't in reality better
> than a careful revision of the current one. (Another aspect of good
> engineering is dealing with tradeoffs.)
>
> Indeed, the above analysis also applies to the proposed charter:
> wouldn't an informational RFC "HTTP Implementors Guide" be nearly as
> good as the proposed RFC2616bis? And far less work, hence available  
> much
> sooner?

That's an interesting suggestion. My initial feeling is that it might  
be harder to settle on text if given a blank slate.

Also, much of the work for bis is done, or in train -- see the issues  
list and draft-lafon. For the apps-discuss people who may not have  
seen them;
   http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/1.1/rfc2616bis/issues/
   http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/1.1/rfc2616bis/draft-lafon- 
rfc2616bis-latest.txt

> (And hey, since it isn't us, who are these evil "short-term corporate
> interests"? Are they available to  take other heat off us, too? :-)

I'm sure someone could be found, for the right price...

--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/