Subject: [apps-discuss] Gopher work and stream selection

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 10:43:21 -0700

Colleagues,

We'd like to get a feel for rough consensus about what path the proposed
Gopher document work should take through to RFC publication.  The question
we'd like you to consider is:

Is there enough technical work to do here, and enough support for doing it
(i.e., willing to contribute text, reviews, shepherding), to have it done
via the IETF stream, or is the Independent Submission route preferable?

Constructive replies only, please.  Also, please leave the question of
which working group is the right place for it until later; for now, we only
want to consider the basic question of IETF vs. ISE.

Thanks,
-MSK, APPSAWG co-chair

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 May 2015 18:15:42 -0000

>Is there enough technical work to do here,

Maybe

 and enough support for doing it
>via the IETF stream, or is the Independent Submission route preferable?

Independent, please.  Gopher was swell, but it is only of interest now
to historians and fans of retrocomputing.

R's,
John

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 11:33:58 -0700

> to historians and fans of retrocomputing.

Let's be careful (and, as I asked, constructive) here.  There is a claim to
the contrary before us, as John Klensin and Patrik have pointed out;
specifically, that there is indeed a community of people interested in
developing Gopher and not simply documenting it.

As you pointed out earlier, we do want to be inclusive, so I don't think
"fans of retrocomputing" is a complete basis to deflect to the Independent
Stream.  The more salient point to me is whether there's enough support for
doing so in the IETF stream.  Is that community committed to the idea of
doing that work in our context, and/or are there enough people in the APPS
area to contribute to and support the work through the IETF process?

-MSK

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 11:42:12 -0700

> to historians and fans of retrocomputing.

Having an IETF working group produce an Independent Stream doc is more
than odd.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 11:43:12 -0700

On 5/26/2015 11:33 AM, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
> There is a claim to the contrary before us, as John Klensin and Patrik
> have pointed out; specifically, that there is indeed a community of
> people interested in developing Gopher and not simply documenting it.

Other than assertions that they exist, I haven't noticed their direct
advocacy for particular work.

d/

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 May 2015 15:38:30 -0400

> developing Gopher and not simply documenting it.

I'm as big a fan of retrocomputing as you're likely to meet, and will be 
pleased to discuss the use of the Fortran FREQUENCY statement and the 
function of the PDP-8's link bit.  But that doesn't mean I think the IETF 
should spend time on them.

If there were really a viable Gopher community, we wouldn't need to have 
this discussion, because the gopher users would be working on the document 
already.  I see no reason to believe that there are as many as ten working 
servers any more.  Start at this page and you'll find that most of the 
links are dead:

http://gopher.quux.org:70/Software/Gopher/servers

So if some people want to spend their own time on a gopher spec and send 
it to the ISE, that's fine, and I might even review the drafts.  Fun 
though it might be, it would not be a good use of a WG that is presumably 
intending to develop standards for the future.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 16:02:30 -0400

(copying Nick -- I don't know if he is on this list and he needs
to be part of the conversation)

--On Tuesday, May 26, 2015 11:33 -0700 "Murray S. Kucherawy"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> Independent, please.  Gopher was swell, but it is only of
>> interest now to historians and fans of retrocomputing.

> Let's be careful (and, as I asked, constructive) here.  There
> is a claim to the contrary before us, as John Klensin and
> Patrik have pointed out; specifically, that there is indeed a
> community of people interested in developing Gopher and not
> simply documenting it.

And that community, or at least one or two people speaking on
its behalf, are, as I understand it, claiming that they are
working on, and have deployed, a GopherNG, aka "Gopher II",
protocol, that IETF standardization might be helpful, and that
the process might add value.  Of course, all three of those
conditions depends on our being able to act like adults rather
than saying "historians and fans of retrocomputing" because of
having heard or experienced and earlier protocol of the same
name long ago.  I believe that we need to treat that protocol
the same way we would if something new came in that was
deployed, had a supporting community, and named after some other
large rodent.

> As you pointed out earlier, we do want to be inclusive, so I
> don't think "fans of retrocomputing" is a complete basis to
> deflect to the Independent Stream.  The more salient point to
> me is whether there's enough support for doing so in the IETF
> stream.  Is that community committed to the idea of doing that
> work in our context, and/or are there enough people in the APPS

Let me try to answer that question in a different way.   I
believe that for this to move forward, Nick and his colleagues
have to be committed to doing the heavy lifting.  That means
willingness to participate in discussions, to update the
document(s) on a timely basis, and to seriously consider
protocol changes if the IETF community identifies issues.  If
they are, then I'm willing to do some reviewing and advising.
Moreover, I think everyone in the Applications Area who has ever
brought an at least partially-baked protocol to the IETF and
expected the community to work on it and standardize it has some
obligation to do so was well.

If Nick and his colleagues are not willing to do that work, then
I think this discussion just ended because I don't believe
anyone here is likely to be able (much less willing) to do it
for them.   FWIW, I am concerned that a -01 version of the draft
has not appeared and wonder if it is symptomatic of anything.

So, Nick. sorry to put you on the spot, but how committed are
you?

best,
   john

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 13:15:21 -0700

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 1:02 PM, John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote:

>   I believe that we need to treat that protocol
​So, a variant of this seems like the most sensible question to ask here.
I'd certainly ask all of the questions John implies (is this deployed? is
there a supporting community?), but I'd also add "Is this deployment
Internet scale, likely to become so, or important for the infrastructure
of the net?"​

If the answer to the first two is yes, and the third no, I'd personally
suggest taking the work to the ISE.  If the answer​ to the third is yes,
then I think the IETF should definitely agree to review/help.  That you
might need a crystal ball to figure out "likely to become so" is a
nasty side effect of this question, unfortunately.  But I think if the
current
belief is either clearly yes or clearly no, then we can always change
our minds (and the stream) if the answer changes.

Just my personal take on where to spend the cycles,

Ted

---

From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 10:08:22 +0900

Ted's questions below, the questions that John asks at the end of his 
mail (not copied below), the answers that have been given and the 
answers that haven't shown up yet for me all point to ISE.

That might of course change if and when we get (different) answers.

Also, John spoke about GopherNG. It would be good to know what's really 
new there; I don't think we have seen any significant information on 
that. If GopherNG is close to just cleaning up a few loose ends, that 
would still mean ISE for me. If it's about something intrinsically new 
that might give it a new chance to come out big, then that might change 
my opinion.

Regards,   Martin.

On 2015/05/27 05:15, Ted Hardie wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> apps-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/apps-discuss
>

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 18:22:55 -0700

On 5/26/2015 6:08 PM, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
> new there

I saw an originally request that appeared to be for documenting the
earlier gopher protocol.  I saw that from one person interested in doing
the task.  I have not seen a groundswell of interest amongst those
active on this list.

Reference to an NG effort appears to be about something different than
was originally requested.  No matter, it requires a collection of people
interested in specifying and/or deploying it.  (In practical terms,
that's really /two/ collections of people. And another type of
groundswell.)  I haven't seen anything that looked like that, either.

d/

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 May 2015 21:36:33 -0400

> the task.  I have not seen a groundswell of interest amongst those

Gopher is documented in RFC 1436.  There was a not very popular multimedia 
extension called Gopher+ which is mentioned in RFC 1738.  It cites a 
definition of Gopher+ on a file on a long dead FTP server at U. of Minn. 
This appears to be a copy of it:

http://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/soft/util/gopher/Gopher+-spec.text

Once again, I think Gopher is swell, but we've already wasted too much 
time on it.

Regards,

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 19:41:36 -0700

On 5/26/2015 6:36 PM, John R Levine wrote:
> Gopher is documented in RFC 1436. 

The new draft explicitly cites that and then offers its reasons for
wanting a revised document.  I'm not commenting on the efficacy of those
reasons, but want to note that just citing back to the existing RFC is
counter-productive.

More generally I don't know why some folk are finding it necessary to
make disparaging comments about this or the people who might want it,
but it's fucking distracting.

As with most proposals for work in the IETF, the core process issues are
quite simple:  Is the targeted work coherent (or somesuch?)  Is there a
group wanting to develop it and a group wanting to use it.

The default answer is always no.  It take active effort by advocates to
change from the default.

I haven't see that here, yet.

d/

---

From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 05:06:23 +0000

Search for “historical note” in RFC 4266 Section 2 
(standards track).

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 22:51:48 -0700

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 7:41 PM, Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> make disparaging comments about this or the people who might want it, [...]
>

I agree; the editorializing about the current utility of old versions of
Gopher strikes me as pretty much irrelevant.  I'm much more interested in
whether there's a community of people interested in committing to
processing the proposed document in the IETF stream.

-MSK

---

From: Claudio Allocchio <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 08:32:14 +0200 (CEST)

"we believe in rough consensus"... and still after a long discussion I do 
not see it appearing here, and we have what seems a moving target in 
front: "documenti what's out" --> docuenting extensions --> standardizing 
an NG version...

so, for the moment I also do not SEE a reaction from those propising to do 
some work (and it seems instead consensus that those writing here will NOT 
do any work).

Still too much on the "-1" side...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Claudio Allocchio             G   A   R   R          [email-masked]
                         Senior Technical Officer
tel: +39 040 3758523      Italian Academic and       G=Claudio; S=Allocchio;
fax: +39 040 3758565        Research Network         P=garr; A=garr; C=it;

            PGP Key: http://www.cert.garr.it/PGP/keys.php3#ca

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 11:18:15 +0100

> but it's fucking distracting.

+1 to all of that.

> I haven't see that here, yet.

I'm not aware of explicit policy, but the threshold seems vaguely higher 
for new work than for updates of or extensions to existing RFCs. In this 
case there aren't many remaining users, but there is an existing RFC and 
there are (AFAICT) existing interoperable implementations that have left 
the RFC behind.

MSK: I'll review. If I haven't said so already.

Arnt

---

From: "MH Michael Hammer (5304)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 19:11:59 +0000

> -----Original Message-----
> From: apps-discuss [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Claudio Allocchio
> Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 2:32 AM
> To: Murray S. Kucherawy
> Cc: John R Levine; Dave Crocker; IETF Apps Discuss
> Subject: Re: [apps-discuss] Gopher work and stream selection
> 
> 
> "we believe in rough consensus"... and still after a long discussion I do not
> see it appearing here, and we have what seems a moving target in
> front: "documenti what's out" --> docuenting extensions --> standardizing an
> NG version...
> 

A question I have to ask, is whether the people who are interested are aware of this discussion on apps-discuss? The lack of proponents may be due to this rather than a lack of interest.

Mike

---

From: Claudio Allocchio <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 21:24:26 +0200 (CEST)

> A question I have to ask, is whether the people who are interested are 
> aware of this discussion on apps-discuss? The lack of proponents may be 
> due to this rather than a lack of interest.

this is an abvious (but quite odd) possibility... Anybody proposing any 
work in the APPS are should at least be aware that apps-discuss is the 
place to go for discussion, before a specific WG is identified (if any)...

but you are right... let's ask them... ;-)

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 12:36:30 -0700

> but you are right... let's ask them... ;-)

I suggest we /not/.

A very long-standing premise to doing work in the IETF is that
proponents for work self-organize.  The proponents have to "show up"; it
is not the IETF's job to recruit them.  (It's fine if those folk happen
to already be in the IETF, so that an announcement or a BOF is enough to
get them to participate in the self-organization, but that's more
accident than reliable.

I've always considered this an essential aspect of the IETF, because
success /after/ IETF work is done depends upon exactly that support.
That is, IETF work is merely a way-station along a path of industry
motivating, creating, adopting and using a standardized technology.

The only exception to this is when the IETF chooses to be concerned
about possibly related work in other standards bodies.  And that's not a
factor in this case.

d/

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 16:04:03 -0400

Claudio and Mike,

(top post) 

That is why I copied Nick in my note on this subject to Murray
yesterday and am copying him on this one.

This is where the "newcomer" issue interacts with the "new work
proposal" one and we need to decide whether we are going to be
welcoming or, instead, present as many barriers as possible to
anything getting on the standards track unless it comes from an
IETF process expert and/or "member of the in-crowd".   I
continue to hope that a proposal will get the same
consideration, using the same criteria, and have at least equal
chance of succeeding whether it comes from a newcomer and
outsider to the community or if it comes from one of the two of
you or, for that matter, from Murray, Dave, or John Levine.  I
hope those same principles apply whether the proposal is called
"Gopher-II" or was a new proposal for "PackRat-I" or some
subspecies of Badger or Beaver that happened to show some genus
or species relationship to Gophers.

Neither Nick nor his colleagues "proposed work in the APPS
area".  He/they posed the question of how this should be handled
in the IETF.  They were told that, if the goal was to simply
produce improved documentation of the historic Gopher protocol,
that should probably be an informational document submitted to
the ISE but that, if there was new protocol work involved and
under active development, the standards-track question should be
explored.  I believe that exploration of AppsAWG, other Apps
Area options, and other standards track options are part of that
exploration, with the questions being asked to keep things
orderly and as much by some combination of Barry (in his AD
role), myself (as part of "helping out the newcomer" and not
wanting to see this dismissed because of prejudices about
"retrocomputing" if there really is an active user and developer
community), and Murray (in an Apps Area capacity) as by Nick.
Given that, while I think he'd best get on this mailing list, at
least temporarily, if he wants us to continue exploring the
topic, I don't think anyone has said "if you want this to be
discussed in the IETF, you are required to be on the following
mailing lists", nor is that necessarily a requirement for such
exploration even though, if Appa Area WG decided to take the
work on, it would clearly be necessary for those interested to
subscribe.

best,
    john

--On Wednesday, May 27, 2015 21:24 +0200 Claudio Allocchio
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> 
>> A question I have to ask, is whether the people who are
>> interested are  aware of this discussion on apps-discuss? The
>> lack of proponents may be  due to this rather than a lack of
>> interest.
> 
> this is an abvious (but quite odd) possibility... Anybody
> proposing any work in the APPS are should at least be aware
> that apps-discuss is the place to go for discussion, before a
> specific WG is identified (if any)...
> 
>...

---

From: "MH Michael Hammer (5304)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 20:16:51 +0000

> From: Dave Crocker [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 3:37 PM
> To: Claudio Allocchio; MH Michael Hammer (5304)
> Cc: John R Levine; IETF Apps Discuss; Dave Crocker
> > this is an abvious (but quite odd) possibility... Anybody proposing
> > any work in the APPS are should at least be aware that apps-discuss is
> > the place to go for discussion, before a specific WG is identified (if any)...
> >
> A very long-standing premise to doing work in the IETF is that proponents for
> work self-organize.  The proponents have to "show up"; it is not the IETF's
> job to recruit them.  (It's fine if those folk happen to already be in the IETF, so
> that an announcement or a BOF is enough to get them to participate in the
> self-organization, but that's more accident than reliable.
> 
> I've always considered this an essential aspect of the IETF, because success
> /after/ IETF work is done depends upon exactly that support.
> That is, IETF work is merely a way-station along a path of industry motivating,
> creating, adopting and using a standardized technology.
> 
> The only exception to this is when the IETF chooses to be concerned about
> possibly related work in other standards bodies.  And that's not a factor in
> this case.
>

Dave, 

I've been active in working groups in the email auth space going back to MARID (shudder). I didn't have a clue about the apps-discuss list until DMARC ended up being discussed here and someone said this is a list you need to be on if you are interested in that. As John Klensin points out, this touches on the issue of whether the goal is for IETF to be attractive to "new" folks interested in a particular area or whether to throw up barriers (to entry) so to speak. I haven't seen what the proposed work product is or even how widely gopher is used these days (if at all) so I'm not in a position to speak to the merits of any proposed work.

Mike

---

From: Hector Santos <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 17:40:36 -0400

Hear hear. John, you remain among the last bastions of IETF hope. :)

-- 
HLS

---

From: Claudio Allocchio <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 09:58:25 +0200 (CEST)

> Hear hear. John, you remain among the last bastions of IETF hope. :)

Sure John...

indeed if I try to just look from outside (to our web site for example), I 
may not easily find out about many discussion lists (and blogs)... I still 
find this is a lack of information also in WG chairs for some topics - 
while running the apps-dir it was - and still is - a struggle to let them 
know about it - ... so it may happen that people do not know how it works.

That's why I saied "let's ask them"... I remember other cases in the past 
where the start was really odd and slow, but ended well in some useful 
specs in the end.

We have all been newcomers... in the (long) past... with little clue on 
where to move about.

So in conclusions, there is work to be done, we need to understand about 
committments about it, and who commits.

all the best