Re: Suggestion for progress

[Marshall Rose <[e-mail]>]

I appreciate the fence you are trying to straddle, but I simply can not
believe the compromise you are proposing.  In effect, you suggest that
we have Klensen edit a whole bunch of documents in an effort to make the
problem go away.  Not only is this going to result in yet another long
delay, but based on the text he's written in the original working group
draft, I will tell you plainly that you have absolutely picked the worst
possible editor.  He has a very strong committment to the original
draft, and ever since the last call failed, he's been trying to wait it
out and block any attempt at closure.  This has twice included his
criticing the CMRS documents for failures to specify items that they do,
in fact, specify.

I'll tell you what.  Here's a counter-proposal.  The CMRS documents

	draft-rose-extensions-05.txt
	draft-rose-8bit-03.txt
	draft-moore-extension-size-03.txt

have received extensive scrutiny from the working group, and have been
iteratively revised based on working group discussion and suggestions.

In comparing these three drafts to the original working group draft, I
will note that they provide equivalent, useful functionality but have
three important properties that are not present in the original working
group draft.  The CMRS documents:

	- are written in a crisp, concise style

	- provide a basis for defining further extensions

	- have a small cost-of-entry to encourage implementation

My position is that the new drafts capture the core of concensus found
in the original working group discussion, but with these important
additional properties.

The one thing not present in these drafts is a collection of
"clarifications" to the original SMTP specification.  I believe that
such information is inappropriate for an "extensions" document.
However, Julian Onions was kind enough to draft a fourth document
containing only the "clarification" material

	draft-onions-smtp-knowledge-00.txt

I feel that this is a worthy effort which should proceed independently
of the extensions effort.

So, here's what I suggest you do.  Go to the IESG and ask them to
consider the three I-Ds above and issue a last call.  See what the
community says.  In the meantime, the working group can work on refining
Onions' I-D.

If you proceed with your plan, you are absolutely inviting disaster.

/mtr

ps: if it will help keeping people from getting bruised egos, we can
give the working group authorship credit on the title pages of the three
I-Ds.