Subject: [NNTP] Working Group Closure

From: "Scott Hollenbeck" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 08:57:57 -0400

A few minutes ago I sent a request to the IETF Secretariat to announce IESG
approval of draft-ietf-nntpext-tls-nntp-09.txt and
draft-ietf-nntpext-authinfo-10.txt.  With those documents completed, the
work of this group is pretty much finished.

One outdated milestone remains: "Oct 04 Provide list of new extensions that
should be considered to the IESG for charter update consideration"

Given that this milestone has been missed by almost a year and there doesn't
appear to be any work going on to address it I am inclined to drop the
milestone, consider the work of this group complete, and close the group.
Work to address new extensions can then by taken up if and when people are
ready to consider forming a new working group.  The mailing list can remain
open to address that topic and any issues that come up during the RFC
editing process.

That's my proposal.  Speak now if you feel the group should remain open.  If
you do feel that the group should remain open, you should also explain how
you will help to complete the work and contribute to work going forward.

-Scott-

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From: "Jeffrey M. Vinocur" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 09:11:38 -0400

On Sep 27, 2005, at 8:57 AM, Scott Hollenbeck wrote:

> the work of this group is pretty much finished.

Wow.

> milestone, consider the work of this group complete, and close the 

I think in some sense we've already completed this, in that the most 
important extensions have now been documented.

The only big thing I can think of offhand is XPAT, which we decided to 
defer.  Is anybody interested in facing up to that now?

Any other extensions I've forgotten?

-- 
Jeffrey M. Vinocur
[email-masked]

---

From: Ken Murchison <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:08:20 -0400

Jeffrey M. Vinocur wrote:

> The only big thing I can think of offhand is XPAT, which we decided to defer.

I think it gets enough use that it definitely needs to be addressed. 
IIRC, il8n is the big issue.

> Any other extensions I've forgotten?

There has been the discussion of a "large article numbers" extension, 
and I've been kicking around a "feed control" extension.

-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     2495 Main St. - Suite 401
716-604-0088 x26      Buffalo, NY 14214
--PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp

---

From: Ken Murchison <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:12:24 -0400

> you will help to complete the work and contribute to work going forward.

There has been talk of rewriting RFC 2980 and/or moving it to 
historical, would this need to be done under the existing WG or a 
followup WG?

---

From: "Scott Hollenbeck" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:32:35 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ken Murchison [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 10:12 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [NNTP] Working Group Closure
> 
> Scott Hollenbeck wrote:
> 

Recharter or new working group as it's not part of the current charter.
Given the history of this group I'd prefer the new working group option,
though a re-charter to work on a 2980 revision and new extensions is also a
possibility.

My big concern is in ensuring that there's sufficient community commitment
to take on, complete, and review new work.  It took this group a LONG TIME
(draft-ietf-nntpext-base-00 was published in 1998) to do what it was
chartered to do.  Not holding meetings during IETF meetings also concerns me
because the group doesn't get the benefit of the available high-bandwidth,
face-to-face communication opportunities.

In short: a small number of people active on a mailing list does not a
working group make.

-Scott-

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 10:30:59 GMT

>you will help to complete the work and contribute to work going forward.

I believe the most urgent piece of unfinished business is what to do about
overflowed article numbers. Opinions vary as to when this problem will
hit us - some predict as little as two years from now, but a more
realistic estimate would I think be six years, or more.

So if we start now, it should be possible to have a smooth transition
method in place by the time it is needed (but it should not be delayed any
further from now).

Therefore I suggest it might be sensible to recharter the WG specifically
to address this problem and to make proposals.

As to XPAT, which has also been mentioned, the problem there was that it
used wildmats, with their built-in anchoring at both ends - which is fine
when it is only newsgroup-names which need to be matched. I think we
agreed that wildmats were just not the right tool for this job, but it is
not clear what the substitute should be. I think it might be better to
leave that one until the nature of any future I18N becomes more apparent.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

---

From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 11:25:37 +0100

> milestone, consider the work of this group complete, and close the group.

In previous discussions we've said "get the document out of the door, then
recharter to look at X". Does anyone have a list of X? [Large numbers is an
obvious example.] I think that's better than closing the group.

> The mailing list can remain

I think we still have an open issue or two.

> That's my proposal.  Speak now if you feel the group should remain open.

I do, though rechartering is obviously needed.

> If

I can certainly act as Editor for some of the work.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <[email-masked]>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <[email-masked]>  | Fax:    +44 870 051 9937
Demon Internet      | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646
Thus plc            |                            |

---

From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 11:28:36 +0100

Scott Hollenbeck said:
> Not holding meetings during IETF meetings also concerns me

I certainly can't justify going to IETF just to work on NNTP. It's quite
likely I can't justify it even to attend three or four working groups.

When was the last face-to-face meeting of this group? How much got done
then, and how much of that didn't get overridden later?

> In short: a small number of people active on a mailing list does not a

We seem to have managed an awful lot.

---

From: "Scott Hollenbeck" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 07:32:59 -0400

> From: Clive D.W. Feather [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 6:29 AM
> To: Scott Hollenbeck
> Cc: 'Ken Murchison'; [email-masked]

Good question.  It's been a long time, December 2000 (IETF-49), I think.
While the meetings aren't decision-making venues, they give other members of
the community an opportunity to pay attention to what you're doing.  It also
gives the group an opportunity to hear what others have to say.

If what you're trying to say is that face-to-face meetinsg aren't valuable,
we're just going to have to agree to disagree.  Trust me when I say that it
is an issue among the people who have to make charter approval decisions.

> We seem to have managed an awful lot.

In the last year or so, not so much in the years before that.  Besides,
amount of work produced isn't the metric to be used.  Broad participation
and consensus is.  That's what appears to be lacking.

-Scott-

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 13:14:12 GMT

>realistic estimate would I think be six years, or more.

Following that, I remembered that there was another piece of unfinished
business, namely to develop a new SASL mechanism that allowed the actual
password to be communicated, securely, from the client to the server, but
in all other respects appearing to behave as a straightforward SASL
authentication. The server would then use the password to consult other
systems (securely, one hopes) before deciding whether to grant access.

Whether this WG (as possibly rechartered) is the best body to undertake
that development is not so clear, but it needs to be done by somebody
somewhere.

---

From: Ken Murchison <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 14:19:00 -0400

> that development is not so clear, but it needs to be done by somebody

This work would probably fall under the SASL WG.  I have a rewrite of 
Newman's PASSDSS mechanism on my TODO list.

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:32:19 -0700

Scott Hollenbeck <[email-masked]> writes:

> One outdated milestone remains: "Oct 04 Provide list of new extensions
> that should be considered to the IESG for charter update consideration"

> Given that this milestone has been missed by almost a year and there
> doesn't appear to be any work going on to address it I am inclined to
> drop the milestone, consider the work of this group complete, and close
> the group.  Work to address new extensions can then by taken up if and
> when people are ready to consider forming a new working group.  The
> mailing list can remain open to address that topic and any issues that
> come up during the RFC editing process.

> If you do feel that the group should remain open, you should also
> explain how you will help to complete the work and contribute to work
> going forward.

Hi Scott,

Here's my feelings on this, speaking just as an individual contributor and
not with a working group chair hat on.

The primary open issue on our previous work that hasn't been resolved to
the satisfaction of several people in the group is the limitation on
article numbers.  Several people do feel that the base draft should be
changed to allow for 64-bit article numbers (others don't).  It's
something that will need to be addressed eventually.  In a typical
implementation, it will probably be another 10 years before it's an issue;
in one unusual implementation, it will be an issue in another couple of
years.  I'm really not sure how to address this issue.

Other than that, while I think there is some work that could still be done
on documenting common extensions, I think the most useful thing by far
that the NNTP community could do at this point is implement the drafts we
just published.  Update existing software, try them out, make sure
everything works as expected in practice, and gather real-life experience
with the new standard.  That has to happen before we can look at advancing
any of these documents farther down the standards track.

That's what I personally plan on doing next, with INN, as soon as I can
find the time to do serious INN development again.  I think this is a good
time to take a bit of a break, try out the work that we've done, and
gather energy.  My inclination would be to reform a working group in a
year or so and start the work on advancing these standards to draft
standard status, as well as look at any additional extensions that need to
be worked on.

I'm happy to keep this mailing list open in the meantime for people to
talk about NNTP standardization and implementation experience informally.

When it comes time to reopen this working group, I hope to convince
Stanford to send me to IETF (which, for Stanford, would probably be in the
Kerberos, SASL, and related areas, but NNTP work can piggyback on that) so
that we can have in-person meetings as well.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>