Re: [UM] RE: WG Review: Enhancements to Internet email to support diverse service environments (lemonade)

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

Folks,

Thursday, January 30, 2003, 10:05:11 AM, you wrote:
EB> Executive Summary: Accept John's second proposal.  That is,
EB> take the charter as is, and insert a May 2003 deliverable of
EB> "lemonade Architecture, IESG and IETF Review, and Possible
EB> Rechartering".

I've waited to comment, because I was hoping to achieve some insight
that would allow a more directly constructive contribution. Alas, all
that has happened is time passing. Perhaps that is indicative of
something worth heeding by the WG...

With considerable regret, I find myself having to offer the following:

I believe Eric's suggestion is an excellent way to ensure that the
working group takes a long time, and is unproductive at the end of it.

        At base, the charter does not tell me what concrete problem this
        working group is solving or what use the output will be.

Here are the salient bits of text, from the opening paragraph of the
proposed charter -- and remember that the opening paragraph is
circulated independently, as the summary of the working group; therefore
it needs to summarize the problem and summarize the utility of the
output, if not also summarizing what will be done:

     "...facilitate operation in environments which use Internet-based
     technologies but which have link characteristics, device
     characteristics, or service environments that are significantly
     different from those common on the Internet..."

Excuse me, but I have not idea what this language means, and it does not
help that I was involved in the early lemonade discussions.  And, by the
way, I also do not know what link characteristics are "common" on the
Internet, what with FDDI, 10Mb ether, 802.11, cell phones, etc.,
nevermind not knowing what the new and different link characteristics
are.

So if the quoted text is supposed to refer to particular transmission
behaviors, it needs to state them clearly, and it should state what is
deficient in the existing set of specifications.

     "A primary goal of this work is to ensure that those profiles and
     enhancements continue to interoperate with the existing Internet
     email protocols in use on the Internet, so that these environments
     and more traditional Internet users have access to a seamless
     service."

No doubt I am misinterpreting this, but it sure sounds as if the goal is
to create some sort of new email service and try to make sure it can be
gatewayed to existing Internet email services?

(By the way, anyone seeking to define a gatewaying service should heed
the stellar history in the IMPP working group.)
     
So...

For this effort to be productive, the charter must be much, much more
clear and precise about the concrete, technical or operational problems
that exist and must give a concrete, constrained description of what is
going to be done to solve them.  And it must do this in simple, direct,
specific language.

Honest, I would offer some such language, but I have not succeeded at
figuring out what problems the group intends to solve or should solve.
        
d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
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