Subject: Document Action: 'ECMAScript Media Types Updates' to Informational RFC (draft-ietf-dispatch-javascript-mjs-17.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2022 10:27:23 -0800

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'ECMAScript Media Types Updates'
  (draft-ietf-dispatch-javascript-mjs-17.txt) as Informational RFC

This document is the product of the Dispatch Working Group.

The IESG contact persons are Murray Kucherawy and Francesca Palombini.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-dispatch-javascript-mjs/

Technical Summary

This document updates the ECMAScript media types to prefer "text/
javascript", obsoletes other related media types, and introduces the 
new .mjs extension for JavaScript modules in order to align with 
implementation experience and industry practice. This document obsoletes 
RFC4329, "Scripting Media Types".

Working Group Summary

When this document was adopted by DISPATCH, it was a fairly simple 
update of RFC 4329 to update the IANA registrations to prefer "text/
javascript" and to mark other related media types as "OBSOLETE". The 
draft was changed to obsolete RFC 4329 due to WGLC feedback. That 
document has issues primarily related to how one determines text 
encoding and the use of file extensions to determine whether content 
should be interpreted as a module or script. This draft makes minor 
updates to that original text to align with current operational reality, 
but it does not attempt to "fix" them in ways that do not reflect 
current practice. This resulted in some discontent among reviewers who 
would prefer cleaner fixes vs. document existing practice.

There have also been discontent about unnecessary and somewhat 
convoluted normative language in RFC 4329. This draft does not attempt 
to fix that in general, although it has made some simplifications in the 
text about determining the character-encoding scheme.

Document Quality

The procedures in the draft are understood by this shepherd to be 
implemented by most web browsers.

The draft has undergone i18n and media-type reviews. John Levine 
performed a helpful early i18n review of version 07 on 8 May 2020. That 
review and follow on discussion resulted in improvements in version 08.   
The draft was posted to the media-type mailing list on 17 May, 2021. The 
resulting media-type discussion mainly rehashed issues already discussed 
(see "Working Group Summary")

Personnel

The responsible AD is Francesca Palombini. The shepherd is Ben Campbell.

RFC Editor Note

Please add the IESG Note.

IESG Note

This document records the relationship between the work of Ecma 
International's Technical Committee 39 and the media types used to 
identify relevant payloads.
That relationship was developed outside of the IETF, and as a result is 
unfortunately not aligned with the best practices of BCP 13.  
Consequently, consensus exists in the IETF to document the relationship 
and update the relevant IANA registrations for those media types, but 
this is not an IETF endorsement of the media types chosen for this work.