Subject: Re: [weirds] extensibility in weirds

From: "John R. Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Jun 2012 11:44:29 -0400

>> The usual approach in situations like this is to have a registry, but only
>> permit updates via new RFCs.
>
>not sure whether you mentioned this as an example or as a proposal
>to go for "RFC required" ...

I suppose it's a proposal.  Makes sense to me.  I wouldn't be unalterably
opposed to expert review, but the RFC requirement means that there's a
stable description of the extension.

>My reading of the emerging or current spirit in the apps area (probably
>influenced by communities which have, say, different, approaches to
>what standards are for) is that this intention might see significant
>pushback.  There is increasing reluctance to use the standardization
>process as either a quality gate or an architectural oversight tool.
>Sadly so, one might say.

Depends where.  Over in the world of e-mail, we think that RFC
required is quite reasonable if you want to add an option to SMTP or
define a new mail header.  And this is so even though in both cases we
have well developed ways to ignore extensions an implementation
doesn't understand.

I recently did new MIME types for application/gzip and
application/zlib via a non-WG RFC and expert review (about 15 years
overdue, but better late than never.)  It wasn't an unreasonable
amount of work.  The RFC is currently in the editor's queue and should
be out soon.  The review process for the RFC definitely made the spec
better.

R's,
John

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 11:54:42 -0400

> stable description of the extension.

I am opposed to it.  If we need a registry (and I still have my
doubts, although I am somewhat more persuaded by the latest arguments
I've seen) what is wrong with FCFS?  We are not the Internet Cops.

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Leif Johansson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 18:04:46 +0200

On 06/18/2012 05:54 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>> I suppose it's a proposal.  Makes sense to me.  I wouldn't be
>> unalterably opposed to expert review, but the RFC requirement
>> means that there's a stable description of the extension.
> 
> doubts, although I am somewhat more persuaded by the latest
> arguments I've seen) what is wrong with FCFS?  We are not the
> Internet Cops.

I'd go for expert review with a review policy that is explicitly
permissive: your only goal is to keep nuisance-registrations out.

---

From: Andy Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 16:12:53 +0000

> I've seen) what is wrong with FCFS?  We are not the Internet Cops.

By FCFS, do you mean first come, first served? Do we have a real concern that multiple registries are gonna rush to register the "lunarNic" prefix?

I'm not exactly a huge fan of the registry idea, though I understand the need. To me an independent submission of an informational does not seem to be that big of a hill to climb, but I'm also somewhat familiar with IETF process.

Perhaps this is where we can leverage experience with EPP. Are there EPP extensions out there that are not documented with RFCs? And if so, was the RFC process considered too onerous or were the EPP implementers simply unaware of the RFC process?

-andy

---

From: Leif Johansson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 18:28:10 +0200

> Perhaps this is where we can leverage experience with EPP. Are
> there EPP extensions out there that are not documented with RFCs?
> And if so, was the RFC process considered too onerous or were the
> EPP implementers simply unaware of the RFC process?

Could be this changes somewhat as coding up something in JSON
is (intentionally) easier to do...

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 13:05:06 -0400

> permissive: your only goal is to keep nuisance-registrations out.

I'm the co-ordinator of expert reviews for DNS RRTYPE numbers.  We've
had a large number of process failures almost all of which has
resulted from experts just not completing things on time.  Why do we
think this community would be more likely to have experts with a lot
of extra time to devote to this?

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 13:08:36 -0400

> Perhaps this is where we can leverage experience with EPP. Are there EPP extensions out there that are not documented with RFCs? And if so, was the RFC process considered too onerous or were the EP…

There are indeed such extensions.  Most of them, last I heard.

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Jaap Akkerhuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 19:39:58 +0200

> there EPP extensions out there that are not documented with RFCs?

AFAIK, there is hardly any extension documented in an RFC.

    > EPP implementers simply unaware of the RFC process?
    
Lazyness is probably a major reason.

	jaap

---

From: "Hollenbeck, Scott" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:54:52 +0000

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
> Behalf Of Jaap Akkerhuis
> Sent: Monday, June 18, 2012 1:40 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [weirds] extensibility in weirds
> 
> 
> 

Extension RFCs:

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc3915/

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc4114/

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc4310/
(obsolete by 5910)

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5076/

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5910/

Extension I-Ds:

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-kong-epp-idn-variants-mapping/

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-obispo-epp-idn/

Scott

---

From: Andy Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:19:48 -0400

> http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-obispo-epp-idn/

Over 50% of those have your name on them, Scott. :)

It's not clear to me looking at 3730 that there is a requirement to register namespaces for use with EPP in the IANA. So maybe EPP isn't a good yardstick after all.

-andy

---

From: "Hollenbeck, Scott" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 18:30:10 +0000

> From: Andy Newton [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, June 18, 2012 2:20 PM
> To: Hollenbeck, Scott
> Cc: Jaap Akkerhuis; [email-masked]

True. It's probably more interesting to hear from extension writers who haven't documented their work in an IETF document.

Scott

---

From: Jaap Akkerhuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 20:42:52 +0200

But there are way more extensions by various registries which are
not published as an RFC. See
<http://dns.be/nl/bibliotheek/documenten/registration_guidelines_part2_epp>
for an example.

I've once heard a story that some registries require an NDA to see
documentation about their extensions.

    It's not clear to me looking at 3730 that there is a requirement
    to register namespaces for use with EPP in the IANA.

I seem to remember that there isn't such a requirement.

    So maybe EPP isn't a good yardstick after all.
    
I guess so.

	jaap

---

From: Leif Johansson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:32:46 +0200

On 06/18/2012 07:05 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> I'm the co-ordinator of expert reviews for DNS RRTYPE numbers.
> We've had a large number of process failures almost all of which
> has resulted from experts just not completing things on time.  Why
> do we think this community would be more likely to have experts
> with a lot of extra time to devote to this?

A reasonable question.

Would the RRTYPE numbers have been better served with a FCFS policy?

	Cheers Leif

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:54:03 -0400

> Would the RRTYPE numbers have been better served with a FCFS policy?

No.  RRTYPEs are dealing with an old protocol that originally couldn't
cope with unknown RRTYPEs, the DNS has cacheing as a basic and
fundamental part of how the protocol works, the RRTYPE number space is
limited (though very large, and this isn't a major issue from my POV),
and an RRTYPE can cause special server-side processing.  So the expert
is looking for those issues.  I suppose it's logically possible that
we could have special server-side processing (e.g. CNAME
substitution), but I think redirects are more normal in http, no?

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 13:48:10 -0700

Hi Andy,
At 09:12 18-06-2012, Andy Newton wrote:
>By FCFS, do you mean first come, first served? Do we have a real 
>concern that multiple registries are gonna rush to register the 
>"lunarNic" prefix?

That should not be a concern unless people are going to use the 
registry for typosquatting.

>I'm not exactly a huge fan of the registry idea, though I understand 
>the need. To me an independent submission of an informational does 
>not seem to be that big of a hill to climb, but I'm also somewhat 
>familiar with IETF process.

Independent Submission is a big hill to climb for people unfamiliar 
with that hill.  They'll probably want Individual Submission to get 
the rubber stamp of approval.

It seems premature to get into a discussion about what kind of 
registration policy is more appropriate when there isn't any 
specification to discuss about.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Jun 2012 02:13:56 -0000

> what is wrong with FCFS?  We are not the Internet Cops.

"snhandle"	Registrant's social network handle

"fbhandle"	Registrant's Facebook handle

"rsocnet"	Registrant's social network, e.g., Facebook, Google Plus
"rhandle"	Registrant's handle on social network

"handleatsn"	Registrant's handle in the form <handle>@<social network>,
		e.g., markz@facebook

"hndlsndom"	Registrant's handle in the form <handle>@domain,
		e.g., [email-masked]

"manchesociale"	Manche du registrant en reseau sociale

"orkut"		Punho registando no orkut

Unlike RRTYPEs, ordinary clients are going to see all of the stuff
that WEIRDS servers return, and it would be nice if we could parse it
without a thousand special cases.

Expert review works fine for MIME types.  Perhaps the DNS crowd really
is unusually dysfunctional.

R's,
John