Re: [weirds] New Unified DNR/RIR Internet-Drafts

["Murray S. Kucherawy" <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 1:11 AM, Linlin Zhou <[e-mail]> wrote:
> IMO, names and numbers not only have common elements but also their own
> unique elements of each other. Our following work should focus on both kinds
> of elements since each kind of elements are important and necessary.

There is absolutely no intent to disregard this point.  The question
for the WG comes down to whether the number of unique things for
either camp is substantial and, if so, how to go about publishing
them.

I think to emphasize the goal of sticking as much as possible to a
common solution, we should aim to produce common documents as much as
possible.  If the hard work of the design team reveals a manageable
number of differences, then I believe they could be merged into the
unified documents; if not, then the working group can decide it would
prefer to create a separate draft that presents the differences,
preferably as extensions to a base document set.

What I would like us not to do is pre-emptively decide that by
creating working group documents which anticipate the division.  We
should only do so later, after the design team's analysis is complete
and the team concludes (and the WG agrees) that the division is indeed
necessary and substantial.

> As for unique elements, I believe there will be tough works need to do
> especially for names. These works also need to be started in the beginning.
> For example, a tough object inventory for names raised by WG chairs is now
> in progress. I think numbers are almost ready now and the names situations
> are more complex than numbers and need more time. If we put all the unique
> parts in one unified draft, names part will delay the whole progress.
> According to the milestone in WG charter, the RIR drafts will be published
> almost half a year earlier than DNR. Will the unified response draft be
> divided eventually? If so, why don't we directly keep the two existing RIR
> and DNR response drafts at the very start? As I said in previous emails, a
> lot of efforts are made for the existing response drafts. These two existing
> response drafts are more worthy than the new unified response draft to be
> the starting points for working on unique elements.

As I also said in previous messages, there is absolutely no intent to
discard the hard work put into existing drafts.  That is especially
true of the design team doing WHOIS response analysis.  The people who
are appointed editors of those documents the WG adopts are required to
record consensus of the WG, and if consensus is to incorporate work
from other individual submissions, then that will happen.  You will be
quite within your rights to advocate for addition of important points
to the drafts that are adopted, but I imagine that will be pretty much
automatic for work that moves us toward our stated goals.  Naturally
the authors of the original drafts will receive appropriate credit
when their work is incorporated.

The matter of editor selection also still needs resolution.

I am not attempting to hold up any one draft's content or any one
person's work as "more worthy" than any other.  Rather, I've proposed
to adopt documents whose directions align with what I believe to be
the desired direction of the working group.

The charter text doesn't require division of the work, but rather
presents it as a last resort option.  As I read it, most of the text
talks about framework and format in the singular.  It also says that
the number registry work is more fully developed so far, so their work
should be the basis for the WG input documents.  I think the proposed
unified drafts to a good job of finding common starting points based
on those points.

However, you are correct about the milestones; the charter text is
focused on providing a single solution, while the milestones show
clear division.  This should have been caught sooner, and I apologize
if it has led to some confusion about our direction.  I think given
the goal of unifying work as much as practical, we should petition to
change the milestones accordingly to focus on producing the common
stuff first and the divergent stuff later.  Assuming the base proposed
set of documents, something like this could work:

Feb 2013 draft-designteam-weirds-using-http to the IESG
Apr 2013 draft-hollenbeck-weirds-rdap-sec to the IESG
Jun 2013 draft-hollenbeck-weirds-unified-rdap-query to the IESG
Sep 2013 draft-newton-weirds-unified-json-response to the IESG
Dec 2013 extension drafts (if needed) to the IESG

Does anyone think those are unreasonable?

-MSK