Re: OPES charter proposal again.

[Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net>]

At 11:03 PM 7/3/2001, James P. Salsman wrote:
> I hope that the latest attempt at the OPES charter is resoundingly
> rejected by the IESG.

The key task statement in the opening paragraph of the draft proposal is:

        "define application-level protocols enabling such intermediaries 
to incorporate services that operate on messages transported by HTTP and 
RTP/RTSP."

"Incorporate services" is vague.  Or rather, it says nothing useful.  The 
opening paragraph of a charter is to be widely distributed, to help people 
decide what a working group is doing and whether it is relevant to one's 
own work.

The current proposal language is frankly a Rorschach for anyone with any 
HTTP-related activity that might involve an intermediary.

Later language in the draft do not assuage this fear:

        "protocols to be defined provide a framework for integrating a 
wide range of services".

Specifics (or even examples) are not provided.

Honest.  In spite of considerable experience writing and reading IETF 
charters, I can not tell what problem is to be solved, never mind how.

d/


Addendum  #1:

        Either as an minor irritation, or as a major demonstration of 
deception -- and I can't quite decide which -- the iCAP web page 
<http://www.i-cap.org/> uses the IETF logo in a fashion that can easily be 
taken to imply IETF endorsement for 
<http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-elson-opes-icap-01.txt>.

Addendum #2:

        Isn't an implied promise to integrate HTTP and RTP/RTSP rather 
ambitious?


----------
Dave Crocker  <mailto:dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253;  fax +1.408.273.6464