[EAI] Minutes from Chicago - first draft

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no>]

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for these very well-written minutes.

Comments ASAP, please!

          Harald Alvestrand
Minutes from the EAI working group
Chicago, IL, USA
2007-07-26

1.      Agenda bashing, etc: 

        Nothing to report.

2.      Status report: 

   a. RFC 4952 published 2007-07-26. (Jubilation)

   b. SMTP believed to be ready except for MIME type choice.

   c. UTF8HDR has open issues, but believed to be ready except for
   MIME type choice.

   d. DSN is a dependency with issues.

   e. DOWNGRADE is in a reasonable state, but there are issues to
   discuss (in particular, "unknown header" handling, multiple
   Downgrade: headers, and downgraded no-Alt cases)

   f. Other drafts are dependent on completion of core.  

Remark (John Klensin): There were late comments on the framework
      document that suggested it could be more clear.  The design team
      is aware of these, and will be incorporated in later revisions;
      but if you had comments or think the document as published is
      not good, send comments _now_.

3.      SMTP
   
   a.  List of issues closed.  A question was put to the room: Does
   anyone object to these issues being regarded as resolved?  There
   was no response.  

   b.  Unresolved issues requested.  There was no response from the
   room.

A question was put to the room: How many people have read the
document?  About one half of the room responded that they had read
it.  

A question was put to the room: Who believes this document is ready
for Last Call?  About one half the room indicated agreement.

A question was put to the room: Who believes this document is not
ready for Last Call?  Nobody responded.

4.      UTF8HDR

   a.  The Chair listed the issues closed.  A question was put to the
   room: Does anyone object to considering these issues closed?  There
   was no disagreement expressed.
   
   b.  The remaining issue is issue 1485: body part for UTF8SMTP.  A
   question was put to the room: Are there any other issues for this
   document?  There were no additional issues raised.

   A question was put to the room: How many people have read the
   document?  There were approximately 10 people responding.  

   A question was put to the room: Once the MIME type is selected, is
   this document ready for Last Call?  Nobody objected.

   John Klensin made a remark that it would be worrisome if this
   document were Last Called prior to the DSN document; the Chair
   replied that they would be Last Called together, because there is a
   normative dependency between them.

   c.  MIME type selection [minute note: out of order from slides; the
   MIME type selection discussion happened before DSN discussion].
   The suggestion from the Chair is that there are some bad options
   that have been eliminated, but that there is nevertheless not a
   remaining clear winner.  The issue is that the WG needs to pick --
   not design -- a method.  Several methods suggested.  John Klensin
   remarked that it is important to find "least liked" options, but
   that nobody has ever died because of a bad decision on similar
   topics.  The Chair asked John Klensin to send an outline to the
   list of what "very bad" options were, and Klensin agreed.  A coin
   toss established the Condorcet method as the way by which the
   choice would be made.

5.      DSN open issues: report by Alexey Melnikov

   a.  Issue 1 is just MIME type issue.  See above.

   b.  If DSN cannot be delivered on the next hop, then what?  there
   are three options: 7 bit, downgrade, or discard.  Eric Allman
   observed that it is important not to make downgrade an implicit
   requirement, because it's possible not all implementations will do
   downgrade.  Some remarks to the effect that detailed design in the
   meeting is not a good idea.  After considerable discussion, the
   Chair asked for a hum on the suggestion that downgrading was off
   the table, but that some versions of encoding are possible.  There
   was a noticeable response in favour, and silence opposed.

6.      Downgrade unresolved issues

   a.  Chair asked how many had read the latest version?  There were
   not many indicating having read.

   b.  There remains an issue with UTF8 addresses with no alternate.
   There were previous suggestions merely to bounce the mail, but that
   seemed unsatisfactory, which is why there has been a suggestion for
   group syntax.  The editor asked for feedback.  General sense seemed
   to be that MUAs would not mishandle empty groups, and that the
   important thing was not to require too complete behaviour lest the
   feature be completely unimplemented.  

   c.  Unknown header fields discussion.  There seem to be two
   options: either a field is processed as Downgrade: [old field], or
   it gets a special Downgraded-* prefix for every field.  The
   room seemed to converge on documenting the problem and moving on,
   but no clear statement seemed to garner clear support.  the Area
   Director pointed out that, to the extent this issue impinged upon
   DKIM, it would need to be addressed, though he did not have a
   recommendation on how to proceed.  The Chair observed that
   Downgrade: fieldname: value received no remarks in favour, but
   Downgrade-fieldname: value was preferred by 7 participants.

7.      POP: Randall Gellens

   a.  Some meeting participants indicated they'd read the document
   recently.

   b.  It appears that a full MIME parser is required in POP servers
   depending on which commands the client has issued (and whether the
   message is 7 bit or has been downgraded).  A large number of slimy,
   worm-like issues are under this rock.  Discussion needs to go to the
   list.

8.      Mailinglist

   a.  Nobody replies to question to the room: Who has read the latest
   version?

   b.  A number of issues outlined, with not much discussion.  Must go
   to list.

9.      Working Group timeline

   a.  The Chair plans to issue a 2-week Working Group Last Call on
   SMTP, UTF8, and DSN in August.  If that goes well, it should be
   possible to go to the IESG in September.  WGLC for Downgrade in
   September, going to the IESG in October.  Then remaining additional
   drafts can be discussed in the December meeting in Vancouver.  

   b.  Given that the entire work is to be Experimental, how can the
   results of the experiment be collected, and how can the results be
   documented?

10.     Closing

   a.  Actions to be taken: MIME decision ASAP, fix drafts after that
   in August, and WGLC after that.

   b.  Other business?  None.



  



    


         


Respectfully submitted,

Andrew Sullivan

_______________________________________________
IMA mailing list
IMA at ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ima