Re: CAT WG Review Last-Call: draft-myers-auth-sasl-04.txt

["Theodore Y. Ts'o" <[e-mail]>]

   Date: Fri,  2 Aug 1996 13:30:08 -0400 (EDT)
   From: John Gardiner Myers <[e-mail]>

   John Linn <[e-mail]> writes:
   > (1) The section proposes that IANA act as a comment clearinghouse,
   > [...].  I'm not aware of precedent for IANA assuming
   > this role with other registered objects: is there precedent for IANA
   > taking on this responsibility, and/or has it been accepted by the IANA
   > for this case?

   This text was lifted from draft-ietf-822ext-mime-reg-04.txt, which I
   believe is currently in IETF-wide Last Call.

It may be perhaps be the text in the MIME registration, but it would
make more sense to require that the IANA maintain a registry of whoever
is the current contact point for a particular mechanism, so that people
could contact the mechanism owner directly, instead of requiring the
IANA to forward comments.  This indirect approach seems somewhat silly.
(Unless we think its worthwhile to allow someone to reserve a name in a
public namespace without making public who has reserved such a name, but
it's not clear this is actually desireable.)

Also, instead of making it optional for there to be an informational
RFC, I think it should be made mandatory.  This seems fair; if the IANA
is going to register it in a public namespace, there should be a public
definition of what the IANA is actually registering.  If someone wants
to do something proprietary, it should be using some sort of
experimental prefix (e.g., X-MACROHARD-UNREGISTERED-PROPRIETARY-STANDARD.)

                                   - Ted