Re: [VCARDDAV] wg concensus to publish?

[Joseph Smarr <[e-mail]>]

Cyrus-I *did* come to the IETF and ask vCard to be revised! :)

See
http://josephsmarr.com/2009/03/25/portable-contacts-and-vcarddav-ietf-74/ --
I spoke over a year ago in detail with Marc, Simon, etc about the
opportunities to simplify and modernize and extend what vCard is doing.
Everyone was polite and thoughtful at the time, but then seems to have
ignored or rejected all the proposed improvements. I'm also frustrated that
we're having these more substantive discussions now much later, but they
still need to be had--not because the rest of us don't like vCard or don't
want it to succeed, but exactly the opposite--we really want vCard to be
great and get widespread adoption and end the fragmentation that has
persisted in the industry for so long. We have a lot of experience getting
that done, and we want to impart that knowledge to your team so that your
spec has a better shot at reaching its potential.

But in order for that to happen, the rest of the WG needs to think through
some of these fundamental trade-offs and decide where they stand:
- taking this opportunity to modernize (both in syntax and
semantics) vs. preserving legacy
- favoring simplicity/readability of the wire format (esp for XML) vs.
maximizing flexibility / automaticity of conversion
- expanding scope to more fields vs. sticking to "core address book" data

These are at the heart of the debate more so than just "convergence" per se.
I really believe that vCard would be more useful and more widely adopted if
it embraced the "left-hand side" of each of those points above, where as
currently they're following the right-hand side. This is not a theoretical
or ideological debate, it's one born out of pragmatism and experience and a
nuanced understanding of how developers large and small have been working
with contact info in the field for the past decade.

So yes, let's please try to use the IETF to revolve these issues. And if no
one else here is receptive to that, well that will also explain why so many
other, related standards efforts have been created along the way. :)

Thanks, js

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 7:18 AM, Cyrus Daboo <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi Joseph,
>
>
> --On October 1, 2010 7:11:24 AM -0700 Joseph Smarr <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
>  To be clear, everyone is aware of vCard, so the fact that several groups
>> chose not to reuse these current drafts might make you "take notice" that
>> lots of people in this field find them unacceptable as is. :)
>>
>>
> Then why invent something new, as opposed to coming to the IETF and asking
> for vCard to be revised? Is there something so fundamentally flawed about
> vCard that prevents that?
>
> Note this is not a criticism of what has been done, I am trying to get a
> feel for why different contact formats have arisen with the goal of figuring
> out whether there is a way to bring things back together.
>
> --
> Cyrus Daboo
>
>