Subject: [apps-discuss] RFC2369 to Internet Standard) Re: The IETF should run an IMAPS server for its lists

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 13:03:05 -0400

(discussion, if more is needed, moved to Apps-Discuss from IETF
list)

--On Saturday, 30 August, 2014 11:49 -0700 S Moonesamy
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi John,
> At 10:03 30-08-2014, John C Klensin wrote:
>> p.s. RFC 2369 is in extremely wide use by multiple independent
>> implementations (including the IETF incarnation of MAILMAN).
>> Can anyone think of a reason it should not be a full Standard?
>> Volunteers to do the writeup and herd whatever and whomever
>> need herding?
> 
> See http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-rfc2369bis-04

And so?  From skimming that draft, it fails to recognize 2369 as
a widely-accepted fact and widely deployed, thereby providing a
reason to _not_ move it to full standard.  In addition, it looks
from the tracker [1] as if you and your colleagues simply ran
out of steam in  the first quarter of 2012, perhaps after John
Levine's review of 6 January [2] (with which I do not entirely
agree), and that Pete finally gave up on it at the beginning of
2013.

Again from skimming, especially of Appendix B (I could have
missed something) the only substantive changes to 2369 are the
whitespace issues (which I'm not sure are substantive), adding a
few more exemplar header fields, and updating references.  And
John points out, there is also some unnecessary and quite
controversial material.

Recommendation/Request: Unless you or others believe it would be
inappropriate for some reason I haven't spotted in the draft you
cite, can we just move RFC 2369 to Full Standard?  The
implementation report is that MAILMAN supports it and has done
so for years, John's note implies that mj2 supports it.  I'm
pretty sure that I've seen messages from LISTSERV, Majordomo,
and Oracle/Sun Messaging Server lists with those headers too,
but two independent implementations is enough.  The headers are
widely used, including on all IETF lists (so "dogfood-eating"
principles apply). There is no evidence that their presence in a
message header set causes problems and some evidence that they
are useful.

If you then want to come back to this and produce an "updates"
document that deals with references and whatever other issues
you think are important (controversial or not), I think that
would be a wonderful idea.  You, however, should expect pushback
on deployment and deployability of some of your suggestions
along the lines of John L.'s review and from those of us who
would be disturbed by something like it being approved without
i18n considerations (EAI-related ones in particular) if nothing
else.

best,
   john

[1]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-moonesamy-rfc2369bis/history/

[2]http://www.ietf.org/mailarchive/web/appsdir/current/msg00687.html

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 10:30:52 -0700

Hi John,
>agree), and that Pete finally gave up on it at the beginning of

The draft state was "External Party" in 2013.  That was around the 
time the work in a working group took most of my time.  I moved the 
thread to apps-discuss@ (see 
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/apps-discuss/current/msg04030.html ).

>John points out, there is also some unnecessary and quite

The main change is the "MUST NOT" for mailing list managers and URLs to URIs.

>message header set causes problems and some evidence that they

The objective was to move RFC 2369 and RFC 2919 along the track.  I 
asked for feedback from the Mailman developers.  There are several 
implementations which support those header fields.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy