Re: Straw-man charter for http-bis

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

> 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."
that's your choice, of course.  but the charter wording is up to the
IESG, and they have the authority to make decisions about what kinds of
activities are in scope and which kinds of activities are out of scope. 
(the draft charter being discussed is just someone's idea of a proposal
to be given to IESG and it's reasonable to debate it, or to suggest your
own draft charter to the applications ADs)

for better or worse, there's a lot of investment in the current prose. 
a drastic rewrite might remove some ambiguities but would certainly
create others - and also create questions about exactly what was
changed.  if HTTP is updated by making relatively minor tweaks where
possible, and major changes to text only when necessary, it's much
clearer what was changed than if there's a major restructuring/rewriting
of the document.  that, and rewriting would force a reset to Proposed
Standard and create an ambiguity over whether the Proposed or Draft
version were authoritative.

Keith