Subject: Re: [UM] Re: WG Review: Enhancements to Internet email to support diverse service environments (lemonade)

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 16:48:28 -0600

Folks,

First of all, I note that no one else seems particularly troubled by
the draft charter language, so this will be my last posting on this
thread, unless others wish to pursue it.

Second, I suspect that the nature of the exchange about this has been
completely missed: There are significant things about the framework of
the working group that were not at all clear to an informed reader of
the current text. And it took significant discussion to get to the
stage of clarifying things.

There is a myriad of spiffy enhancements we might choose to do. In
fact I happen to like the ones that are listed and believe that
Internet mail will be the better for having them.

However if we do not have a clear statement of the reasons for doing
this particular set of things -- and by that I mean a very clear and
thorough statement of what problem needs to be solved, or what benefit
needs to be obtained -- then we are expending millions of dollars --
the aggregate cost of pretty much any IETF standard -- on what is
really a whim, or at least a blind market gamble.

And that is one of the major problems stalking IETF work. For example,
I'll claim that it has been one of the problems that led to the
complexity of IMAP.

And lastly:

Thursday, February 27, 2003, 12:54:30 AM, you wrote:
>> 1.  Enhancements to Internet mail for better operation with
>> resource-constrained devices and with channels that are high latency
>> and/or low bandwidth

Nummc> Deliverables 1, 2, and 3.

>> 2.  Specification of a gateway between existing Internet mail and
>> other email services operating in such constrained environments.

Nummc> Deliverable 5.

The deliverables are the "what".  What is missing is an unambiguous
and concrete statement of "why". The current text is sufficiently
vague as to be useless.  (If fact I have no idea how the proposed work
in any way pertains to memory constraints on the participating
systems.)

If my proposed text to overly precise, then it too needs to be fixed.

And, by the way, The fact that #5 is a separate project, with a
separate goal from the other deliverables, was something that I simply
did not see from the current draft text. Nor the fact that the goal is
to build a gateway. And these strike me seriously non-trivial failures
to grog the purpose of the working group.

Permit me the small arrogance of thinking that if I had that trouble
understanding the charter, so will others.

TH> Maybe I misunderstood you, but I thought you believed that the
TH> deliverables were clear and constrained in the new version.

Except for the last one, calling for gateway work, yes I do.

And that is why I started to revert to treating the first paragraph
concerns as secondary. However then it became apparent to me that
other folks seemed unclear about the nature and reasons for the work.

TH>  I think we're back to the question
TH> of the opening paragraph word smithing.  There's really only so
TH> much that can be done there; we shouldn't try to include all the deliverables

I am trying to clear about the difference between needs/benefits,
versus "means". This is not about citing the deliverables in the
opening paragraph. It is about making the reasons for the work and the
planned benefits clearer. The deliverables are specific things that
will be done. What is not stated is why or how any of them are needed.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>

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