Subject: IESG response to appeal regarding draft-ietf-lemonade-mms-mapping-04

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 18:14:06 -0400

The IESG has reviewed John Klensin's appeal against the
approval of draft-ietf-lemonade-mms-mapping-04.txt (see
http://www.ietf.org/IESG/APPEALS/klensin-appeal-lemonade-mms-mapping.txt
for the full text of the appeal).

Note that the Area Director principally concerned, Ted Hardie,
gave technical input during the IESG discussion of the appeal,
but recused himself from the approval of this response.

After analysis, the IESG withdraws its approval of 
draft-ietf-lemonade-mms-mapping-04.txt as Proposed Standard
and invites the lemonade WG to act on the following points.

1. The IESG agrees that the technical updates between the 
-02 and -04 versions of draft-ietf-lemonade-mms-mapping were significant 
enough to warrant re-review by the working group.  It therefore asks the 
working group to review the changes between -02 and -04; if the WG is 
satisfied that the changes are within its intent, it should so inform 
the IESG. If not, it should produce a draft that restores its original
intent, and so inform the IESG. When the draft is updated, the IESG will
restart the review process at IETF Last Call.

2. We note that the Resent-Count header is not mentioned in the IANA 
Considerations. While RFC 3864 would allow it to be registered 
independently, based on the OMA documents, it would be valuable to 
include a note in the IANA Considerations indicating what registration 
class (Permanent or Provisional) would be sought for and stating that 
the registration would be accomplished by reference to those documents.
Having the registration request be concurrent with or precede the approval
of the revised draft would also be valuable.

3. The appeal challenges the legitimacy of a gateway standard
mandating certain mappings to and from X- headers. In one place,
the draft states:

    ...Such systems should
    be aware that X-headers might be removed during transit through
    Internet MTAs.

It is not the IETF's business that the external MMS specification
makes use of X- headers in a way that the IETF mail standards do not.
Additionally, given the ambiguous status of X- headers due to the
discrepancy between RFC 822 and RFC 2822, the WG was placed in a
difficult situation. Mail gateways have to satisfy pragmatic as well 
as formal requirements. The IESG therefore believes that it was within 
the WG's scope to specify mappings to and from X- headers, as long as 
it is clear that they are not part of the RFC 2822 standard format and 
that their treatment by Internet MTAs cannot be relied on.

We now believe that the above sentence describing permitted Internet
MTA behavior is not sufficiently prominent in the draft, and we request
that the working group expand and strengthen it or otherwise remedy
the problem, unless the WG decides for other reasons to remove the 
X- header mappings.

If the X- header mappings are retained, they are also candidates for
provisional registration under RFC 3864 and should be noted as such
in the IANA Considerations.

4. The appeal raises a number of other technical points that were 
not, as far as we know, raised during WG discussion, WG Last Call,
or IETF Last Call. Some of them were raised by John Klensin in 
a review carried out for the General AD during IESG evaluation. 
We believe that if they had been raised earlier, they might
have affected the document content. But this in itself does 
not automatically mean the IESG was wrong to approve the document 
at the Proposed Standard level.

However, since the WG will be reconsidering the draft, if the WG 
wishes to make additional changes based on its review of John's 
technical concerns, it should do so, and inform the IESG when consensus 
within the WG has been reached so that a new cycle of IETF review 
can be initiated.

5. John's appeal raised the question of whether the working group had 
an adequate opportunity to review the comments raised by his review.
The IESG believes that as we continue to encourage cross-area and
cross-working-group review, the issue of how to make sure review
comments are seen by the right people and handled in an open manner
will continue to become more important.  We would like to work with
the community on guidelines for reviewers, ADs and working groups on
how to handle these review comments.

In summary, the IESG

- withdraws its approval of draft-ietf-lemonade-mms-mapping-04.txt
  as Proposed Standard

- requests the lemonade WG to review and confirm or withdraw the changes 
  between the -02 and -04 versions

- notes that the lemonade WG is free to consider other technical comments
  included in the appeal

- requests the lemonade WG to improve the text about MTA treatment of
  X- headers, if these mappings are retained

- requests the lemonade WG to complete the IANA Considerations as necessary,
  considering RFC 3864 

- requests the lemonade WG to provide an updated version of the draft 
  that reflects WG consensus, for renewed IETF Last Call and IESG review.

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