Subject: [Emailcore] Emailcore wg charter

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2022 10:20:17 -0700

G'day,

Seeing an email citing Ticket #54, as well as a new posting for 
rfc5321bis, I wonder whether all of the work being done on the revisions 
is within the working group's charter?

The charter has language typical for revision efforts needing tight 
focus, seeking to limit changes and potential disruption for the 
installed base.  Specifically...

Emailcore Charter:

    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-emailcore/

    This working group will conduct a limited review and revision to the base email specifications
    ...
    The limited review is restricted to corrections and clarifications only, with a strong emphasis on keeping
    these minimal and avoiding broader changes to terminology or document organization.
    ...
    However, no new protocol extensions or amendments will be considered

54 ticket items seems like quite a few, given the constraints.  As for 
changes to the SMTP specification, consider the diff between RFC 5321 
and latest rfc5321bis draft:

    https://www.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url1=rfc5321&url2=draft-ietf-emailcore-rfc5321bis-10
    <https://www.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url1=rfc5321&url2=draft-ietf-emailcore-rfc5321bis-10>

A few questions to consider:

  * Are enough wg participants able and willing to justify every change,
    in detail, as conforming to the charter? Simply put, why were they
    essential, within the charter constraints?
  * Given the number of changes, what is the basis for believing that an
    average reader will be able to apply the revised specification,
    while ensuring continued interoperability, especially given how
    creative readers can be with new text?

The concern is not whether any given change is broadly reasonable or a 
generally good idea, but whether it is essential to the immediate 
working group goal and within its charter?

One could reasonably expect significant evidence of a problem that needs 
fixing, for each change.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Todd Herr <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2022 14:07:10 -0400

On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 1:29 PM Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> rfc5321bis, I wonder whether all of the work being done on the revisions is
> within the working group's charter?
>
> The charter has language typical for revision efforts needing tight focus,
> seeking to limit changes and potential disruption for the installed base.
> Specifically...
>
> Emailcore Charter:
>
> 54 ticket items seems like quite a few, given the constraints.
>

Hatless...

I've understood the text I've been proposing for ticket 54 to be intended
for the Applicability Statement, not for 5321bis itself.

Does that change your opinion of the impact of this ticket on our adherence
to the charter?
-- 

*Todd Herr * | Technical Director, Standards and Ecosystem
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*m:* 703.220.4153

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---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2022 11:34:13 -0700

On 3/22/2022 11:07 AM, Todd Herr wrote:
> 
> Does that change your opinion of the impact of this ticket on our 
> adherence to the charter?

Todd, Since the concern I'm raising is general, it was the number, not 
the target.

I had in fact spent a moment of thought about doing a careful accounting 
for how many tickets applied to each working draft, but decided that 
that would be a distraction.

Look at the diff.  That's a lot of changes for a document with this 
charter's intent.  And it is not at all clear to me that all those 
changes are essential, within the confines of the charter.

d/

---

From: Todd Herr <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2022 14:39:47 -0400

On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 2:34 PM Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I see. Thank you for the clarification.

--

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2022 15:42:31 +0100

On 22 Mar 2022, at 18:20, Dave Crocker wrote:

>   - Are enough wg participants able and willing to justify every 
> change, in detail, as conforming to the charter? Simply put, why were 
> they essential, within the charter constraints?
>   - Given the number of changes, what is the basis for believing that 
> an average reader will be able to apply the revised specification, 

I certainly think it's a good idea to go through the diff and make sure 
that we agree with the changes being made and that they are really 
needed. Interestingly (to me), I just did a quick run-through of the 
diff above and I was surprised with how *few* changes there actually 
were in the document. Lots (most?) of the changes are changed reference 
numbers, different spacing, or a moved paragraph or two; there were less 
substantive changes than I had remembered. But on this suggestion, I 
definitely will set aside some time to do a thorough review with the "is 
this necessary" mantra in mind.

That said, as per RFC 2418 3.3, it is in the end the chairs' call 
whether any suggested change is within or out of scope of the charter. 
I'm willing to presume they have been paying attention enough to have 
called out anything that they noticed out of scope already, bit it's 
certainly it's reasonable for any of us to ask the chairs to review any 
particular change with regard to scope, and they may ask for 
justification. And it's also reasonable to disagree with the chairs' 
call on that call and appeal to the AD (etc.) if needed. But I don't 
think we need to do some special collection of justifying "significant 
evidence" for each change unless some question is raised about it that 
hasn't already been reviewed.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2022 09:11:33 -0700

On 3/23/2022 7:42 AM, Pete Resnick wrote:
> But I don't think we need to do some special collection of justifying 
> "significant evidence" for each change unless some question is raised 
> about it that hasn't already been reviewed.

That is, at base, a 'default yes' model.  A charter with these kinds of 
constraints, typically benefits from a much more active consideration 
whether each possible change is within scope.

I haven't done an audit, but it has seemed to me that consideration of 
scope has been rather more erratic than that.

d/

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2022 09:59:37 +0100

On 23 Mar 2022, at 17:11, Dave Crocker wrote:

> That is, at base, a 'default yes' model.

Not at all. As I said, I've been presuming that the chairs have been 
doing their job by defaulting "no" to changes. I've certainly seen a 
consistent pattern of that, both from the chairs and from WG 
participants. So I don't think there's much of a reason to believe that 
we've made some big mistake along these lines.

> A charter with these kinds of constraints, typically benefits from a 
> much more active consideration whether each possible change is within 
> scope.

And I agree, again from my earlier message, that it would be prudent for 
each of us to re-read, with diff in hand, to make sure we believe that 
the due diligence was done. The thing that I don't see as necessary is 
what I took to be your proposal for that review to be so formal as to 
have documentation of "significant evidence" that each change met the 
appropriate charter criteria. We've had plenty of WGs in the past with 
very constrained charters and I've never heard of us doing that formal 
of an audit.

> scope has been rather more erratic than that.

Not my impression, but a sanity check is always a good thing.

pr