Subject: Re: [iucg] wrt IDNA2008 migration (was: IDN processing-related security considerations for draft-ietf-websec-strict-transport-sec)

From: JFC Morfin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 05:06:28 +0200

At 02:27 02/10/2011, Mark Davis â˜• wrote:
>The third choice, of course, was to maintain backwards compatibility 
>with 2003 for all characters in Unicode 3.2, and just extend the 
>same principles to new characters. That is a much easier migration path...
>
>We've seen this before. XML 1.1 only had a small 
>breaking-compatibility changes, but those changes were enough to 
>completely doom it.

Mark,

Your "backwards" compatibility word is correct in terms of usage 
(your part as Unicode), but is architecurally incorrect because what 
you actually want is "forwards" IDNA2003 compatibility, with 
extensions to Unicode 6.1, etc. And this is exactly what IDNA2008 
permits but has not documented yet.

IDNA2003 actually tested a bundle of different concepts. This test 
shown that most of these concepts were OK but that the bundling 
introduced layer violations. The operational IDNA2003 (your need) 
works.The architectural IDNA2003 (the IETF and users' need) does not scale.

>But as you say, that was not the rough consensus of the WG.

To the countrary. And this is why I pushed for  a quick consensus 
and  for working on IDNA2010 (as the technical use of  IDNA2008) and 
then on  IDNA2012 (as the general usage of IDNA2008).

Why? you may recall that after the LCs the AD started to raise good 
architectural questions leading the IESG to not accept RFC 5895 as a 
WG deliverable. These questions and their solutions were of the 
essence but ... outside the WG charter.

It was then an absolute necessity that we establish IDNA2008, so we 
might work on the following steps, rather than keeping discussing 
along our limited charter.

As a result, RFC 5895 was not discussed by the WG as it should have 
had. Therefore, an IDNA2003 section was not included which should 
have documented how developpers could develop a scalable "IDNA2003 
interface" (i.e. a "forewards" adaptibillity at [or with] the user 
application and an IDNA2008 interface with the Internet DNS). Such an 
"IDNA2003 layer" is one of the multiple layers (ML) the IDNA2008 
conformant ML-DNS should support.

Best.
jfc

---

From: jean-michel bernier de portzamparc <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2011 00:41:27 +0200

Jefsey and dear colleagues,
I frankly think we share the same sun but are planets apart with John (hi! ,
so far away John - thanks for what you did!).

I therefore do not see the need for us to try to spend our weak resources to
make these people understand what we achieved together, what we are doing,
and more than anything else what we need. They are just not interested for
most, and the friendly ones just do not understand how they could "rock the
mammoth".

"Perhaps that would have been the right answer but, again, it wasn't what
the WG decided on" (John!)

The WG decided nothing! The charter decided it (irt. Unicode and mapping)
and the Internet had already decided the rest ("too much calls for
subsidiarity").

Our IUusersdebated question is "do we keep pretending we are dismayed yet
cooperating Internet lead users, and trying to help ? or do we consider that
our interest lies in the Intersem, that we are mainly interested in it, and
that however keep being concerned by Telecoms and Internet issues for being
part of the data and content oriented communications strata below?".

Frankly, John Klensin is by far the most advanced and open minded one in
terms of our architectural requirements. Are we happy with RFC 6055? What
does IAB provides us with? Vint Cerf did move with Google+, IAB not. Unicode
not. IETF not. ICANN not. It clearly shows that it is Google and us, and
probably - further - on Google vs. us.

This is why I vote for clarification and efficiency and I claim being an
"Intersem user", relating with the IETF rather than contributing to it. Even
if the Intersem is still at exploration, prespecification, prototype
development stage, I do agree that this will clarify the issues and most
probably permit us to better help IETF-men through occasional summaries and
reports published as informational RFCs.

Mark and John are right. Now we have: XML 1.1 for five years, IPv6 for 15
years, IDNA2008 for two years, and still a 1983 Internet (28 years). And
nothing moves. This is because the politically correct use is still the
decentralized master/slave dumb end to end use of the RFC 3935 architecture,
and it is still accepted by users. They achieved the maximum  Unicode and
IETF could do. Either we are happy at their Internet level or we move to the
next net stratum.

Best and thanks to all for the Internet and your netkeeping.
But I need to move up!
Portzamparc.

2011/10/2 John C Klensin <[email-masked]>

>
>
> --On Saturday, October 01, 2011 17:27 -0700 Mark Davis ☕
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> > The third choice, of course, was to maintain backwards
> > compatibility with 2003 for all characters in Unicode 3.2, and
> > just extend the same principles to new characters. That is a
> > much easier migration path...
>
> Unfortunately, that level of compatibility would have
> permanently doomed those who believe that ZWJ and ZWNJ (and some
> other "map to nothing" cases) to permanently living with
> distinctions that they consider very important.  Perhaps that
> would have been the right answer but, again, it wasn't what the
> WG decided on.
>
> > breaking-compatibility changes, but those changes were enough
> > to completely doom it.
>
> Although the jury is still out, the same could be said for IPv6.
> To the extent that analogy is relevant, one might suggest that
> there weren't enough perceived benefits in XML 1.1 and IPv6 to
> justify dealing with the incompatibilities... or the conversion
> and deployment costs whether or not the incompatibilities
> existed.  It is harder to prove that the incompatibilities alone
> are to blame.
>
> On the other hand, if strict backward-compatibility with
> deployed technologies were always the right answer, we wouldn't
> need to be having discussions about conversions of
> tungsten-filament incandescent lighting to CFLs and LEDs because
> we would still be using candles and gas or, to use an older
> analogy, we would be worried about a rather different sort of
> pollution and waste problem in our cities than emissions from
> automobiles.
>
>    john
>
> _______________________________________________
> Idna-update mailing list
> [email-masked]
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
>

---

From: "J-F C. Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2011 01:58:06 +0200

At 00:41 03/10/2011, jean-michel bernier de portzamparc wrote:
>I frankly think we share the same sun but are planets apart

I apologize for this partly off-topic mail.

Jean-Michel,

I do not think your mail was appropriate. One does not get the 
support of people in hurting them with ad hominems and ad personams. 
IETF is in charge of the Internet. ITU is in charge of Telecoms. This 
makes different SDOs and different areas, but the same level of 
dedication. The Intersem is something more different from the 
Internet than the Internet is from Telecoms because there is a layer 
gap (active/local content extended services) between Datacoms and 
what we call Metacoms. This raised the question of the progression: 
the WG/IDNABis work is precisely what shown how to fill this gap and 
permit our further progression, i.e.:

- architecturally: by external subsidiarity in full respect of the 
internal Internet and of the external user applications.
- documentation wise: through the IUCG, i.e. the cooperation of those 
who strive to explore the Intersem area with those who strive to make 
its Internet basis work better. We certainly still have to make it 
happen, and I understand your impatience, but at least we know how 
now: the IUI. And this was a good surprise we also still have to digest.

In the past I had to oppose Unicode as a consortium, and more 
recently I had to oppose some propositions within this WG. This was 
because I considered them commercially biased, as per the IAB RFC 
3869 very honest standards, and therefore detrimental to everyone 
(Telecoms, Common and Extended Datacoms, and Metacoms [that we are 
not alone to explore]). The work carried by the IETF and Unicode 
people is brilliant and we need them for the Internet to exist, and 
further on the Intersem to emerge. There are no bias. There is 
respectable specialization.

We are not on planets apart: we are at different layers of the same 
communication system. And our layer(s) are not well defined yet. Give 
me a final definition and a working proto of the Intersem.

RFC 1958 explains that to be stamped as "Internet", propositions must 
be scalable. IDNA2003 was not architecturally scalable, but was 
operationally scalable as Mark hinted it. IDNA2008 turns out not only 
to be scalable in terms of linguistic diversity but to exemplify how 
the whole Internet is by nature more architecturally scalable than 
expected. This is what delays me: I am only interested in the 
"Internet Plus" solution to experiment and validate the IUI concepts 
and power. But that power is much broader than I foresaw and it takes 
time to understand it within the Internet architecture and then to 
experiment it in order to learn its pitfalls.

I started with the simple idea for the ML-DNS of building a DNS 
technology fork, adding linguistic and format IDNA2008 conferment and 
extended converters, in order to handle domain names as a multilayer 
pile structure. The IDNA2008 "unusual" (RFC 5895) case and IUI have 
open an architecturally consistent possibility to support fringe to 
fringe active/local content without change to the Internet legacy 
achitecture, which only is oriented towards end to end passive 
content transport.

First, classes, netix interapplications, etc. seemed enough to 
additionally focus on. Now we consider a full Intersem network 
operating system, plus true multilingualization and semiotics, 
graphcodes and orthotypography (variants), plus the emergence of 
diktyology as a major new discipline, plus semantic processing and 
the need of the direct involvement of syllodata and of a noetic 
architectony: these things big issues and they have nothing to do 
with the IETF. The same as W3C and semantic Web has nothing to do 
with ITU. Except practical discussions like the IANA and ISO 11179 on 
the happiana list.

So, please: WG/IDNAbis and IUCG are IETF. So let us talk of IETF 
issues, in the IETF way and netiquette. IDNA2003 was architecturally 
incomplete. IAB evaluated the consequences. This is why they called 
for IDNA2008 and he IESG approved the WG/IDNAbis charter. ML-DNS 
would permit to provide IDNA2003 full compatibility (including fringe 
to fringe French majuscules). What I tried to explain Mark is that if 
he wishes to keep an IDNA2003 environment and to enhance it, he can 
discuss it under IDNA2008 ML-DNS. I am late because I laked time and 
resources and as I just said the matter became very large, this is 
true, but my propositions are public and everyone can use them and pass me.

jfc

---

From: jean-michel bernier de portzamparc <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 02:44:41 +0200

Jefsey and all,
I apologize to everyone if my mail was off topic and hrting. This was not
intended.
Please understand that one may get frustrated with IDNA2008 being two years
old, the same for the IUI, the same for the ML-DNS. And nothing running yet!
I understand the huge complexity of the Intersem project and your personal
load during these two years.
I just considered that starting top odwn from the Intersem topic (starting
from mind2mind intercomprehension) might be more motivating than proceeding
bottom-up from plug2plug, end2end, fringe2fringe, brain2brain, noos2noos ...
Portzamparc

2011/10/4 J-F C. Morfin <[email-masked]>

> I do not think your mail was appropriate.
>

---

From: "J-F C. Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:30:02 +0200

At 05:59 04/10/2011, Mark Davis â˜• wrote:
>There are other alternatives. The obvious one is, well, maintaining 
>backwards compatibility. In this case, it would provide that:
>    * Every valid 2003 IDN remains valid under 2008
>    * Additional valid IDNs are allowed under 2008: with either post 
> Unicode 3.2 characters or those unmapped by 2003.
This is exactly what IDNA2003 did not permit and IDNA2003 does permit. However:

- this demand belong to the user side. Therefore, someone must 
develop it on the user side, as RFC 3958 exemplifies it. I am not 
alone and buzy: Unicode could do it.
- there may be other demands that a strict statu quo: this is why 
adequate developments on the user side must support multiple 
solutions. And why, to answer the questions of Lisa Dussault, the 
IDNinA is to be replaced  first by an IDNApplication. IDNA2003 did 
not architecturally scale, but IDNinA also does not scale.

Now, you and I can keep ourself repeating this non-exchange for 
years, until users have defacto changed from the Internet2003 to 
their Internet20XX. It is true that IDNA2008 has changed the status 
of the Unicode consortium contribution to the Internet architecture. 
Why is Unicode not taking advantage from it to bring other 
contribution. For example, why is Unicode not participating to the 
ICANN/VIP work?

"IDNA201XX" will have to support variants and, more generaly, 
orthotypography. This going to call for the support of "netlocale" 
new kind of files. Will this be through a grassroots, an ICANN, an 
IETF, an Unicode or a joint effort? To permit is the "IDNA2010" basic 
concepts of the IUI "plugged layers on the user side" (Internet PLUS) 
are to be identified, tested, validated (ML-DNS), within the IDNA 
architectural framework. Or just delayed in implementing some on the 
Host side, like with the "Google+". Or in joing efforts.

Best
jfc

---

From: Patrick Suger <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 19:54:00 +0200

as a group we do not understand because we did not understand what the
problem was and what we really agreed upon. No surprise, this is typically a
"third window" problem. This also is true for Jean-Michel and most of the
"JEDIs" I am afraid.
There is no bottom-up, nor top-down correct approach: this was the actual
IDNA2008 consensus. This is complexity. There is an iterative synergy
approach. The work carried by ICANN WG/VIP might be impressive: yet how
could the IETF methodology address it and make a better internet out of
their variants?
I agree with you guys that the Intersem could be the correct approach but
through internal self-catalysis. However, who is ready to think that way?
PS

>  At 05:59 04/10/2011, Mark Davis ☕ wrote:
>
>    - Every valid 2003 IDN remains valid under 2008
>    - Additional valid IDNs are allowed under 2008: with either post
> This is exactly what IDNA2003 did not permit and IDNA2003 does permit.
>