Subject: Re: Protocol Action: 'Atom Threading Extensions' to Proposed Standard

From: Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2006 09:28:44 -0700

I wrote the synopsis, in which I was careful not to state that it was  
a WG document.  I believe it was accurate for what it said although  
it's very brief.  I discussed explicitly with the IESG during the  
IESG tele-conference calls that there was some lengthy debate and  
disagreement over certain mechanisms in the draft.

Lisa

On Jun 26, 2006, at 7:23 PM, Robert Sayre wrote:

>
> On 6/26/06, Robert Sayre <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> On 6/26/06, Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> >
>> > Your reading might differ from others'.
>>
>> I've read a lot of these, so I know this synopsis differs others.
>> Usually they stuff like "WG is OK with this." It's perfectly natural
>> to question and appropriate things that seem out of the ordinary.
>
> er,  a little steamed here, that's not English.
>
> It's perfectly natural to question whether things that seem out of the
> ordinary are appropriate.
>
> Anyway, you don't seem to have accurate answers on the process when it
> doesn't match the outcome you're looking for.
>
> -- 
>
> Robert Sayre
>
> "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."
>

---

From: "Robert Sayre" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 21:43:05 -0400

> disagreement over certain mechanisms in the draft.

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for the clarification. You may have missed another question I
recently asked, so I'll repeat it here. I am concerned that purl.org
lists the document author as the owner of the namespace URI, and I
wonder how the IESG came to the conclusion that the namespace is not a
problem. I see Sam Hartman raised the issue. What was the resolution?
Could the draft advance to Draft- or Full-Standard in that namespace?

-- 

Robert Sayre

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:41:50 +0900

>Could the draft advance to Draft- or Full-Standard in that namespace?

I looked at that namespace shortly. It seems that it would be easy
to change the owners to make clear that this is owned by the IETF.
This can be done whenever it's needed. A purl namespace in and
by itself isn't any better or worse than a W3C namespace.

Regards,    Martin.

#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: "Robert Sayre" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:50:06 -0400

On 7/11/06, Martin Duerst <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I looked at that namespace shortly.

Thanks, but I don't see how you would be able to answer any of the
questions I asked above.

> It seems that it would be easy
> This can be done whenever it's needed.

Actually, mnot delegates that path. Can he take it away? He's warned
us about the very same thing wrt to Atom 0.3.

> A purl namespace in and

I don't see any factual basis for that statement. For instance, the
IETF has a liason relationship with W3C.

-- 

Robert Sayre

---

From: James M Snell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:06:32 -0700

All I need to know is who to transfer it to.

- James

---

From: Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 16:02:59 -0400

I can't speak for all of the IESG, how closely they reviewed the  
document and how carefully they considered the appropriateness of the  
namespace.  We don't have rules against such namespace choices.  We  
could argue about whether or not we should have such rules, but the  
results of that argument would most likely affect future specs.

To be clear about Sam's issue, Sam asked about change control for the  
document, and did not suggest changing the namespace or some other  
change.  He said "I want to confirm that we hae sufficient control  
over this specification that we have change control for the future."   
We do, so a simple "Yes" answer was the resolution that addressed  
Sam's concern.

It's too bad if Sam's review raised a point that you would have  
preferred to consider in Last Call.  At this point, it's very rare to  
pull a document or change something like this that would affect  
implementations.  Often the remedy at this stage is to start working  
on the next revision of the RFC and/or to make a note to fix in the  
next revision.  So the IETF change control over this document may  
answer your concern, one way or another, as well.

Lisa

---

From: "Robert Sayre" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:43:36 -0400

On 7/18/06, Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]> wrote:
> We don't have rules against such namespace choices.  We
> could argue about whether or not we should have such rules,

Well, there is a BCP about this.

> At this point, it's very rare to
> implementations.  Often the remedy at this stage is...

I should hope that the IETF/IESG doesn't encounter this situation
often, but that doesn't seem like a strong argument. How commonly are
private namespaces used in IETF standards? The right argument to have
is whether the namespace is a problem. Even the draft's author
acknowledges that it is a valid concern, though he probably doesn't
have the same solution in mind.

-- 

Robert Sayre

---

From: James M Snell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:07:59 -0700

That's kind of hard to comment on given that I'm not exactly sure what
"solution" you're suggesting.  If it's changing the namespace URI, I'd
be annoyed to do so given the facts that it's currently already being
used in the wild and that you're the only one, as far as I can recall,
who has actually ever complained about it.  That said, however, "very
annoyed" does not equal "unwilling". If the IESG determines it to be a
problem, then changing the namespace is fine.  I trust their judgement.

- James

Robert Sayre wrote:
> ...Even the draft's author

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 09:58:45 +0200

Robert Sayre schrieb:
> ...
> ...

Although I share Robert's concerns about how this spec became a Proposed 
Standard, I really have trouble to see the issue here. As a matter of 
fact, I'm using a purl.org URL in one of my (non-Atom related) drafts as 
well.

What we're talking about here is not change control over the namespace 
or the namespace name! It's about what happens if an HTTP client 
dereferences that URL, which is irrelevant for the purpose of XML 
namespaces. My (and I assume also James') assumption is that once the 
specification is out, the purl.org HTTP URL will be reconfigured so that 
it redirects to a URL identifying the actual RFC (preferably to readable 
HTML :-).

All of this is only necessary because the IETF insists in not minting 
HTTP URLs themselves. I think the argument is that they can become 
unstable. Of course that depends on the organization minting them and 
maintaining the servers, not the actual type of URI... (note that even 
the BCP for usage of XML in IETF specs -- RFC3470 -- mentions that it 
would be good if the IETF would allow URLs from www.ietf.org for this 
purpose).

Best regards, Julian

---

From: "Sylvain Hellegouarch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 09:12:05 +0100 (BST)

> would be good if the IETF would allow URLs from www.ietf.org for this

Just a thought like that but wouldn't it make sense for RFC 4287 to have
specified that every standardised extension should follow the same
namespace as RFC 4287?

For instance RFC 4287 uses http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom
Extensions should then be something like: http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom-FTE

It's just a rough idea.

- Sylvain

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 10:49:51 +0200

> Extensions should then be something like: http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom-FTE

Well, that makes standardizing extensions much harder (you need the W3C 
assistance in getting a namespace URI) with no gain (at least, as far as 
I can tell).

It's a *feature* that it is so easy to define a globally unique XML 
namespace name.

Best regards, Julian

---

From: "Robert Sayre" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:54:55 +0200

On 7/19/06, Julian Reschke <[email-masked]> wrote:
> namespaces.

It's irrelevant for the XML software, but not the implementer, which
is why you want it to redirect to something. That's the problem I have
with it.

-- 

Robert Sayre

---

From: James M Snell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 07:45:22 -0700

http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0 now redirects to the draft-12
spec. When the rfc is minted, it will redirect to the rfc.

- James

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 14:18:42 -0400

>>>>> "Robert" == Robert Sayre <[email-masked]> writes:

    Robert> On 7/18/06, Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]> wrote:
    >> We don't have rules against such namespace choices.  We could
    >> argue about whether or not we should have such rules,

    Robert> Well, there is a BCP about this.

Do you believe the current draft violates a requirement of that bcp?  What about a recommendation?