Subject: Re: RFC2518bis (process)

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 20:36:05 +0200

Elias Sinderson wrote:
> 
> Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
>> [...] So can we please consider the union of 
>> <http://www.webdav.org/wg/rfcdev/issues.htm> and 
>> <http://ietf.cse.ucsc.edu:8080/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=WebDAV-RFC2518-bis> 
>> as current issues list? 
> 
> I would think this to be a reasonable starting point for the upcoming 
> efforts.
> 
> Re: Bugzilla, are we intending to continue tracking issues on the 
> bugzilla installation? I would be in favor of this for a number of 
> reasons that I'll skip over here. (I'll happily enumerate them if asked, 
> but one should think they them to be rather self-evident and well 
> understood.) Assuming all are in favor of this approach, someone will 
> need to take on the task of importing the issues listed on the 
> webdav.org site into bugzilla. . .
> 
> For historical and other reasons it would be desireable to import all of 
> the issues listed, although a certain amount of pragmatism would dictate 
> that closed issues could be safely omitted. At the very least, an email 
> should be sent to the mailing list with a summary of the already closed 
> issues as detailed within the webdav.org list.
> 
> Following the import into bugzilla, it would seem straightforward to go 
> through them one-by-one in seperate threads.

Lisa, Cullen,

it would be nice if you could provide some feedback about what's going 
on. Are there any plans to actually get the work finished, should we the 
working group give up, or are new volunteers for authoring the spec needed?

Best regards, Julian

---

From: Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 13:59:20 -0700

Sure, no problem.

  - I last published RFC2518bis a couple months ago:  
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/idindex.cgi? 
command=id_detail&id=8360.  I don't recall seeing any comments.

  - I don't think Jason Crawford has the time to contribute any more :(   
So no more RFC2518bis co-author or issue tracking.

  - I've been hunting around for interoperability documentation --  
because we did do two interop tests -- but we don't seem to have that  
available now (perhaps it was not intended to be public outside the  
interops anyway).  We never did get somebody to volunteer to collect  
interop data or format that for the IESG  
(http://www.ietf.org/IESG/Implementations/).

What are other peoples' thoughts about how to do this now?

Lisa

On Sep 23, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:

>>> <http://ietf.cse.ucsc.edu:8080/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=WebDAV- 
>>> RFC2518-bis> as current issues list?
>> reasons that I'll skip over here. (I'll happily enumerate them if  
>> asked, but one should think they them to be rather self-evident and  
>> well understood.) Assuming all are in favor of this approach, someone  
>> will need to take on the task of importing the issues listed on the  
>> For historical and other reasons it would be desireable to import all  
>> of the issues listed, although a certain amount of pragmatism would  
>> dictate that closed issues could be safely omitted. At the very  
>> least, an email should be sent to the mailing list with a summary of  
>> the already closed issues as detailed within the webdav.org list.
>> Following the import into bugzilla, it would seem straightforward to  
>> go through them one-by-one in seperate threads.
>
>
> Lisa, Cullen,
>
> on. Are there any plans to actually get the work finished, should we  
> the working group give up, or are new volunteers for authoring the  
> spec needed?
>
> Best regards, Julian
>

---

From: Geoffrey M Clemm <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 22:09:47 -0400

It sounds like we need another co-author to replace Jason.

Cheers,
Geoff

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 10:04:46 +0200

Lisa Dusseault wrote:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/idindex.cgi?command=id_detail&id=8360.  
> I don't recall seeing any comments.

Actually I was waiting that the WG comes to agreement about how we do 
the issue tracking. It's a bit pointless to review drafts if there's no 
process how to deal with the comments.

How about re-starting work on those issues that are on the two issue 
lists we have (<http://www.webdav.org/wg/rfcdev/issues.htm> and 
<http://ietf.cse.ucsc.edu:8080/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=WebDAV-RFC2518-bis>) 
and using one of the two as the current issue tracker (as suggested by 
Elias and myself)?

> ...

That's probably a major problem.

Without that kind of information, we won't be able to progress to the 
next standards level, right?

As far as I am concerned, the importance of a revised version of RFC2518 
is much higher than actually moving to Draft Standard, thus if we these 
two goals conflict (time, interop experience with changes introduced 
since RFC2518) we should IMHO sacrifice the latter one.

Best regards, Julian

---

From: Geoffrey M Clemm <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 08:07:34 -0400

I agree with Julian on this.

Cheers,
Geoff

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 09:50:18 -0700

> process how to deal with the comments.

You are going to hate my answer on this so I apologize in advance :-)

The issues do need to show up in the email lists since that is the archived
record of IETF stuff. Clearly they can also be recorded in various other
tools - I've seen groups successfully use everything from bugzilla, blogs,
source code control systems, word documents with revision control, text
files, and just plain old email. The real point of these systems is to help
the author of a document track what they need to do. Because of this, I
believe that issues fall into two categories. 1) resolved things where the
WG group agrees and the author just needs to update the documents 2) complex
issues where it is not clear if the WG has reached consensus.

For the category 1 stuff, I plan to leave it up to the author of a document
to decide how they want to do this and how much they want others members of
the group to be able to edit, update, add etc. I'm a big fan of
collaborative tools but whatever the author is comfortable with that will
get the job done quickest is fine with me.

For the category 2 stuff, I as chair need to be able to have clear
visibilities into these and so does everyone one else in the WG. Also, there
are not many of these sort of issue. Because of this, I plan to track these
using the email list as the authoritative copy. I don't care if they are
also tracked in the system the author is using but on the key topics we are
having a hard time getting consensus on, I'm going to do it on the list.
This may seem arcane and prehistoric to do it with ASCII email but there is
only a handful of items and it will work out fine and no one can complain
about it later. It may not be best, but it will work and I rather focus
energy on getting to consensus instead of debating tools.

Cullen

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 09:56:06 -0700

Given the current state of collection of interop results and planning for
what needs to be collected, this sounds like the right path to me. I'll take
this as consensus unless I hear some objections.

<big red alert warning>

Just because we are recycling at proposed, we should not use this as an
excuse to put more stuff in. Let's document what people are doing and the
key things they need and we will be that much closer to draft. If there are
parts no one uses or needs, we can take them out. From a what goes in this
document point of view, let's keep thinking about our goal is to get to
draft not greatly expand the protocol. We can use *other* RFCs to expand the
protocol. 

<\alert>

Cullen

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 19:00:26 +0200

> You are going to hate my answer on this so I apologize in advance :-)

No need to. Anything that gets us productive is good.

> issues where it is not clear if the WG has reached consensus.

I absolutely agree that issues need to be reported and discussed here. 
As a matter of fact all the issues I raised *have* been reported here, 
for instance in...:

<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2004JulSep/0153.html>
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2004JulSep/0154.html>
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2004JulSep/0156.html>

The only reason why I entered them in BugZilla was that I was told to :-)

Best regards, Julian

---

From: Geoffrey M Clemm <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 13:00:35 -0400

I agree completely with the contents of Cullen's big red alert.

Cheers,
Geoff

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 10:10:22 -0700

Lisa, can you weigh in on how you want to track the issues that we have
clear consensus on. If you want to use both
>> <http://ietf.cse.ucsc.edu:8080/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=WebDAV-RFC2518-bi
I can cope with that, thought it seems like having one would be better than
two.

On 8/23/05 1:52 PM, "Elias Sinderson" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Elias

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 10:21:22 -0700

We have a long list of stuff in
>> <http://ietf.cse.ucsc.edu:8080/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=WebDAV-RFC2518-bi
Some of this we agree on, some not, and such.

Here is what I need from everyone in the group. I need the list of issues of
things that need to change from the text that is currently in
draft-ietf-webdav-rfc2518bis-07 - I only need the issues we are having a
hard time agreeing on. Once we have a list, we can start a thread on each
one and solve them. If it is an issue that you would have a slight
preference for A but could live with B, say that.

I like to have a reasonable date for completion of this list and after that
date we do our best not to add new issues that have not previously been
brought up. Ideas on what a good date for this is?

Thanks, Cullen

I have tried generating this list from the two links above but I can't. Some
people feel things have been closed that should be open.

---

From: Jim Whitehead <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 10:41:10 -0700

> because we did do two interop tests -- but we don't seem to have  
> that available now (perhaps it was not intended to be public  
> outside the interops anyway).  We never did get somebody to  
> volunteer to collect interop data or format that for the IESG  

IMO, I don't think it would be too difficult to gather  
interoperability information for most WebDAV features. There are many  
existing WebDAV clients and servers that are readily available, and  
it would only take a few days to run a few combinations through their  
paces with a packet sniffer running.

- Jim

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 10:52:04 -0700

On 9/26/05 10:41 AM, "Jim Whitehead" <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> 
>>  - I've been hunting around for interoperability documentation -- because we
>> did do two interop tests -- but we don't seem to have that available now
>> (perhaps it was not intended to be public outside the interops anyway).  We
>> never did get somebody to volunteer to collect interop data or format that
>> for the IESG (http://www.ietf.org/IESG/Implementations/).
>> 
> 
> IMO, I don't think it would be too difficult to gather interoperability
> information for most WebDAV features. There are many existing WebDAV clients
> and servers that are readily available, and it would only take a few days to
> run a few combinations through their paces with a packet sniffer running.
> 
> - Jim
> 

Should we start making a document or check list of all the features we needs
to check and then a list of which clients and servers have a hope of
supporting each of those features so we can try and get a feel of it we can
do this?

Cullen

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 11:05:29 -0700

> The only reason why I entered them in BugZilla was that I was told to :-)

I look back over the email logs and don't know if I should laugh or cry.
We've gone left, we've gone right, and all along people have more or less
said "sure if that gets the work done". I'm sure I'll screw up a few times
and end up doing 180 degree turns.

Anyways, thanks to everyone for coping with this. The fact that there are a
few key people that keep pushing stuff forward even with all the frustration
is certainly a key part of the group not being closed down. (And Julian I
think you win the award for quickest replies in the IETF)

Cullen

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 11:07:31 -0700

> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2004JulSep/0156.html>

Agreed, I just can't make heads or tails of if any given issues is
1) solved and in documents
2) solved and agreed but has not been put in bis yet
3) not solved but not a big deal, one or two people who care will work it
out
4) big hairy issue that the WG needs to figure out what they are going to
do.

I need help to find out what things are #4.

---

From: Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 12:07:35 -0700

I can't edit issues.htm.  I can move it to  
http://ietf.webdav.org/webdav and edit it from there, which I think I  
would prefer.  That is, if people want the main editor to be the same  
person to track issues.  I find it to be useful to have the person who  
tracks issues not to be the person who proposes to close them -- the  
same principle behind which in many development teams, the developer  
who resolves the bug "fixed" is not allowed to resolve the bug  
"verified".

Note that I've tracked a bunch of issues separately in a Word document.  
  This is a big document because it tracks not only every change made to  
RFC2518 but also why -- it was intended to link issues together with  
what changes were made in an attempt to resolve the issue.
http://ietf.webdav.org/webdav/rfc2518bis/RFC2518%20Changes.doc

If people are OK with me tracking issues, then I propose to move the  
issues table to the same location and edit it myself.

lisa

On Sep 26, 2005, at 10:10 AM, Cullen Jennings wrote:

>>> RFC2518-bi
>>> RFC2518-bi
>>> s>
>> asked,
>> of
>> go

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 12:28:26 -0700

I am coming in late in the game and don't want to step on too many old land
mines. As long as we have some viable plan on how to resolve and that the
issues I as chair need to drive home are clearly outlined to me on list,
then I'm good with anything.

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 23:23:54 +0200

Lisa Dusseault wrote:
> 
> I can't edit issues.htm.  I can move it to http://ietf.webdav.org/webdav 
> and edit it from there, which I think I would prefer.  That is, if 

Whatever works for you (you probably could get a password from Greg 
Stein for that part of www.webdav.org; my one doesn't work either).

> people want the main editor to be the same person to track issues.  I 
> find it to be useful to have the person who tracks issues not to be the 
> person who proposes to close them -- the same principle behind which in 
> many development teams, the developer who resolves the bug "fixed" is 
> not allowed to resolve the bug "verified".

Agreed.

> issues table to the same location and edit it myself.

i) Any volunteers for the issue tracking besides Lisa?

ii) Format: whatever works. I personally prefer formats that I can link 
to (so each issue has a stable URI), such as BugZilla URLs or anchors in 
(X)HTML documents.

Best regards, Julian