Subject: [EAI] Status of the EAI effort

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:47:14 -0500

EAI participants,

As has already been mentioned on the list, the four "core"
documents are done and published as RFC 6530 - RFC 6533.  Unless
we can now make significant progress in moving other work
forward, we should conclude the the WG has run out of steam and
either suspend it until there is more experience or kill it and
recharter when appropriate (in practice, those two options
aren't different enough to worry about).  My personal preference
would be to get the two clusters of documents outlined below
done before we suspend/ shut down, but I can't either do the
work or supply the energy if the WG isn't able to show that it
is willing and able to put in the effort.

I believe that the current agenda for specifications is:

(1) Mailing lists.   

There has been substantially zero discussion of
draft-ietf-eai-mailinglistbis-01 since it was posted and not
much more discussion of its predecessor.   We need to get
reviews of this document and discussion of whether the WG is
ready to work on it and move it forward or whether we want to
try to devise an explanation for the IESG as to why it isn't
necessary at this point.  I think we are obligated to do one or
the other.  

As to the latter option, I think the only viable position is
that people should not try to use mailing lists with non-ASCII
addresses (the address to which mail for the list is sent) or
distribution addresses (the backward-pointing address for
traffic distributed from the list), and that people should not
send to such lists from non-ASCII addresses, at least until
SMTPUTF8 is much more broadly supported and the issue can be
reviewed.   That would be a specific special case of one of the
cases covered by draft-ietf-eai-mailinglistbis.  I would predict
it would make no one happy, but it would at least be very easy
to do.

How does the WG want to proceed and, in particular, who intends
to review and work on that document?

(2) POP and IMAP.   

The key issue here is downgrading.  We believe that the base POP
and IMAP documents are ready to go modulo some tuning after we
make the downgrading decisions.  Anyone who disagrees with that
belief should speak up very quickly.  

My impression from the mailing list discussions is that we have
general agreement that, when a message in a mail store requires
SMTPUTF8 capability and an IMAP or POP client is only
ASCII-capable, different strategies may be appropriate in
different circumstances.   If people disagree with that
conclusion and want a formal consensus call, please speak up
soon.

A new version of draft-ietf-eai-popimap-downgrade was posted on
Monday that reflects that view of different strategies for
different purposes.  A number of other sections have been
clarified and some explicit questions asked.  We need to see
reviews and comments on that draft --the general strategy and
the specific comments-- in order to move forward.  A lot of work
went into making this version more readable and accessible;
please reinforce that effort by reading it now and helping to
find both substantive issues that need discussion and areas of
text that need further editorial or clarification work.

Similarly, Arnt has posted a first draft of what the "minimal
downgrading" approach as draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade-00.
People who are more sympathetic to that strategy should review
it and _at least_ the revised introduction to
draft-ietf-eai-popimap-downgrade and get comments onto the list.

We also need to decide whether the variants on "no downgrade"
need to be written up and, if so, in what form and who is going
to do the work.   Suggestions welcome, especially if they
contain words like "I volunteer".  If there are none, Joseph and
I will try to figure out a way to avoid doing that work.
	
Finally, a comment/inquiry about an EAI meeting at IETF 83 in
Paris.  IETF meeting time is limited and valuable and, at least
IMO, we have often not used it very well.  Those who think that
a meeting in Paris would be useful should explain why on the
list and should include references to particular discussions of
particular documents that have occurred on the list and that
would benefit from face to face discussion to move forward.  To
be explicit about that, if there are no discussions on the list
about any of the topics identified above, there will be no
meeting in Paris.  There will be a meeting iff there are such
discussion, they cannot be resolved on-list, and someone can
make a persuasive case that f2f time would help.   If not, and
after some discussion with Joseph and Pete, we'd rather keep
things on the mailing list and, if necessary, schedule one or
more topic-specific interims with WebEx or Jabber chat, rather
than taking up time in Paris.

    thanks to all,
      john