[EAI] Status of the four (or five) documents

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Hi.

I'm copying the full EAI list on this because I'm sure people
are wondering what black hole the documents dropped into.  The
very high-level summary is that the RFC Editor had serious
problems getting several of them into shape that would be
appropriate for publication.  That led to some intense reviews,
which turned up problems with terminology and related issues.
Some of those had to be resolved because they created
ambiguities or confusion, others just were worth cleaning up as
we were doing other work.

I want to stress that the RFC Editor has been very helpful about
all of this and has put in a lot of extra effort, both of which
I appreciate and believe the rest of the WG should too.  Insofar
as there is a problem, it is our fault for being too optimistic
about what they could and would fix without a lot of input from
us.  I think we are all learning for the future.

A note from the outgoing IETF Chair that essentially suggested
that documents that had taken this long and been this much work
(especially for the RFC Editor) should be returned to the WG so
that they could be revised, reviewed by the WG and put through
Last Call again further complicated matters and led to some
additional delays.  We assumed the WG wouldn't be happy with the
several more months of delay that would imply, but see below.

At this stage, I think the current status is as follows (if I
have any of this wrong, please someone correct me).  Because of
crosswise normative references and the like, these documents are
part of a "cluster", which means that none of them will actually
be published until all of them are.

(1) Barry's 5322 revision, aka RFC-to-be-6854, and
simpledowngrade, aka RFC-to-be-6858, are done, signed off, and
ready to publish (unless some brand-new issue shows up).

(2) The IMAP spec, aka RFC-to-be-6855, has been signed off on by
everyone but Shuo Shen.  We are waiting on him to finish a
review and tell the RFC Editor to go ahead.

(3) There are still some minor issues, including a question
about IPR and a bit of confusion with the RFC Editor about what
changes have been approved or not, associated with the POP spec
(RFC-to-be 6856).  Once that is done, we will need signoff from
_all_ of the authors.  

(4) I believe that popimap-downgrade (RFC-to-be 6857) is about
ready to go modulo fixing one small definition, but I'm not sure
that Kazunori Fujiwara or the RFC Editor agree (there have been
some loose ends and confusion about them).  With luck, we will
get that straightened out tomorrow or Monday.

If we still have outstanding issues left by circa Monday
afternoon, I intend to ask for a f2f meeting with RFC Editor
staff and as many authors as I can round up.  Anyone who
particularly wants to participate should like me know,
especially if you will be remote.

Finally, in the interest of openness and in case anyone wants to
review drafts, I'm going to give away a secret to the WG that
isn't really one (it is just not widely publicized).  AUTH48
working drafts are at
<ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/authors/>.  The numbers are
above -- if you want to look at a particular draft, find the
number, scroll down that page until you find the latest version
number associated with it and click.  Files named
rfcNNNN-diff.html are diffs from the I-D; other diff files are
likely to be less helpful to those who haven't been involved in
the AUTH48 process.  The only thing I ask is that people be very
careful with these drafts: they look like RFCs and have RFC
numbers, but are not the RFCs, so circulating them into the wild
could cause a lot of confusion.  

I am not expecting anyone in the WG outside the relevant authors
to dig out the documents and study them, but want to give you
the opportunity.

If you do look at one or more of them and have comments, send
them to the authors with copies to Joseph and myself (and to
Pete if you think things have gone seriously astray).  Silence
will be construed as either consent or indifference, which are
basically equivalent at this stage in the process.

I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow or during the week.

best,
   john