Re: [Shutup] [ietf-smtp] Proposed Charter for the "SMTP Headers Unhealthy To User Privacy" WG (fwd)

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

On 12/2/2015 8:59 AM, Derek J. Balling wrote:
> On 12/2/2015 11:54 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> On 12/2/2015 8:43 AM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>>>
>>> On 02/12/15 16:32, Derek J. Balling wrote:
>>>> Why isn't this as simple as chartering the WG to go off and:
>>>>
>>>> 1.) Document the answers to questions 2 and 3 above, with data
>>>> 2.) If they so choose after doing #1, propose remedies or changes to the
>>>> existing methodologies consistent with the data they found above
>>> (With no hats) That seems eminently sensible to me. I'm sure
>>> the specific text to describe the questions would need a bit
>>> of work, but that oughtn't be too hard.
>>
>> 1. That's an IRTF type of task, not an IETF type of task.
>>
>> 2. As sensible as the task might seem, the IETF pretty much never
>> requires documentation about expected efficacy.  That makes imposition
>> of such a requirement, here, discriminatory.
>>
>> The original approach to chartering working groups was rather simpler:
>>
>>   1.  Is there clear indication that 'the community' wants to do this,
>> by virtue of there being folk who want spend time on wg development and
>> they or other folk making noises about interest in implementing and
>> developing it?
>>
>>   2.  Is there a clear understanding of potential /danger/ from doing this?
>>
>> These days, we mostly stop at the first half of Question 1.  But we have
>> pretty much always left the question of 'efficacy' to the market.
>>
> It seems to me that #1 is covered by virtue of the request existing in
> the first place.


Please re-read what I wrote a bit more carefully and consider the part I
said is mostly ignored, namely the second half of #1.  If you still hold
the view you stated, please explain how the second half has been satisfied.


> I would argue that #2 will be covered in whatever work-product the WG
> comes up with (just as any other RFC would have to document
> negative-impacts, lack of backward compatibility, etc.).

If there is no obvious problem with doing work in this space, then yeah
waiting until it's done to look for specific problems makes sense.  But
that's not applicable for the current type of work, as dangers of the
/category/ of work have already been cited.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net