Re: [MMUSIC] Eric Rescorla's No Objection on draft-ietf-mmusic-sdp-bundle-negotiation-51: (with COMMENT)

[Adam Roach <[e-mail]>]

On 5/21/18 7:55 AM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
>
>     >I have made a few notes of things that I still think are problematic, but I
>     >am clearing my DISCUSS.
>     >
>     >   o  Initial offer: The first offer, within an SDP session (e.g.
>     a SIP
>     >      dialog when the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) [RFC3261] is
>     >
>     > This appears still not to be resolved. Here is the 3264 definition "
>     > Protocol operation begins when one agent sends an initial offer to
>     > another agent. An offer is initial if it is outside of any context
>     > that may have already been established through the higher layer
>     > protocol." I'm not making this part of my DISCUSS, but I think it's
>     > very confusing and I would strongly urge the AD to address it.
>
>     This is based on the structure that MMUSIC has previously agreed
>     on, and is used in many drafts.
>
>
> Yes, but it also contradicts the SDP RFC.
>
>
>     The text does explain what “initial offer” means in the context of
>     the document.
>
>     I am happy to re-visit that discussion in MMUSIC on a generic
>     level, but as far as this document is concerned I think we shall
>     keep the currently agreed structure.
>
>
> Ben, Adam? You're the ADs for this.


Ben is the responsible AD here, so I'm deferring to his judgement 
regarding whether the document can proceed.

Speaking only as a SIP protocol expert, I agree with EKR that the 
redefinition of a frequently used RFC-3264-defined term is problematic, 
and will probably lead to interoperability issues. When readers 
encounter a term that they believe they understand, it's unlikely that 
they will notice that it has been redefined to mean something different 
[1]. I believe that replacing the phrase with something distinctive -- 
such as "initial bundle offer" -- would alleviate this issue, with no 
real drawback. I would not think that such a change warrants sending the 
document back to the WG, but I won't argue against doing so if someone 
else thinks it does.

/a

____
[1] For the issue at hand, I'm reminded of Lewis Carrol's take on 
lexical semantics: 
http://www.literaturepage.com/read/throughthelookingglass-54.html