Re: Last Call: draft-resnick-2822upd (Internet Message Format) toDraft Standard

I had some email outage and only saw this after today's IESG  
Evaluation, sorry.

I didn't see consensus for a particular change as a result of this  
conversation.  There was widespread agreement that X-headers are  
messy, but not what to say about them.

Lisa

On May 21, 2008, at 7:22 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> Lisa,
>
> Could you let us see your summary of the discussion about
> (not) documenting the X-headers? I haven't seen any further
> comments since Dave's message below, and it appears that the
> IESG is ballotting on the document now.
>
> Regards
>   Brian
>
> On 2008-04-08 06:34, Dave Crocker wrote:
>>
>> Pete Resnick wrote:
>>>> (1) Partially restore the 822 text, stressing "private use", rather
>>>> than "experiental".
>>> I don't think we'll be able to do this; see (3) below.
>> ...
>>>> (3) Encourage X-headers for strictly private use, i.e., they SHOULD
>>>> NOT be used in any context in which interchange or communication
>>>> about independent systems is anticipated and therefore SHOULD NOT  
>>>> be
>>>> registered under 3683.
>>> I think this is DOA. There are many folks (myself included) who  
>>> think
>>> this should not be encouraged in any way, shape, or form.
>>
>>
>> Folks,
>>
>> One of the lessons of the community's 30+ years of protocol work is  
>> that
>> specification details which are actually usage guidance, rather  
>> than concrete
>> interoperability details, often have little impact on a global  
>> community.  The
>> community formulates its own preferences.
>>
>> When X- as original proposed, I thought it was marvelously clever.   
>> I still do.
>>
>> But it doesn't work.
>>
>> While it does protect a privately-developed header field label from  
>> being
>> preempted by a standards process, it creates a much more serious  
>> problem of
>> moving from private-use to public standards and having to (try to)  
>> re-label the
>> field.  This is a highly disruptive impact./
>>
>> In other words, if the model is true that existing practices get  
>> standardized --
>> and in this realm they often are, I think -- then we need to design  
>> things to
>> make the transition from private-to-public be comfortable.   
>> Defining a
>> private-use naming space runs counter to that goal.
>>
>> Valuable lesson.  We should learn it.
>>
>> d/
>>

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