Subject: [EAI] The mailing list draft

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:10:22 -0400

(Co-chair hat on)

Hi.

One of the things we didn't get to on the Jabber chat was what
to do about the mailing list draft.   The current version will
expire later this week.  In my personal opinion, John has done a
good job of creating a starting point, but, if the WG cannot or
will not engage on it, I don't see how to give him the input he
needs or how to move it forward.

I also note that we still don't have new drafts of any of the
POP/IMAP documents (including the downgrade ones) that
incorporate the changes agreed to during the Jabber chat/
interim meeting.  If authors or editors think they are waiting
for something, they should speak up.

Questions:

(1) Do we need to schedule another interim meeting to see those
drafts and get discussion started on them?

(2) Are we abandoning the mailing list spec by default?

(3) If the answer to (2) is "no" does anyone have good ideas as
to what to tell the community and the IESG.  My default if no
one has anything useful to suggest is to put a comment into the
Shepherd's report indicating that, without deployment experience
with EAI, it WG can't specify what to do about mailing lists
with destination participants that might or might support EAI
capabilities.

Feedback (and new POP/IMAP drafts) needed asap.

      john

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:26:36 +0200

> for something, they should speak up.

Uh... maybe I've forgotten something? Simpledowngrade has some minor 
text issues, but I had no substantive issues noted, and a quick scan of 
http://www.ietf.org/jabber/logs/eai/2012-05-14.html doesn't show 
anything obvious?

Arnt

---

From: Joseph Yee <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 11:03:39 -0400

Personal thought on mailing list spec is mix of (1) and (3), where we
should review and document the lack of deployment experience into the
mailing list spec.

That say, a little towards (1).

Joseph

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Arnt Gulbrandsen
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> Uh... maybe I've forgotten something? Simpledowngrade has some minor text
> issues, but I had no substantive issues noted, and a quick scan of
> http://www.ietf.org/jabber/logs/eai/2012-05-14.html doesn't show anything
> obvious?
>
> Arnt
>
> _______________________________________________
> IMA mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ima

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 11 Jun 2012 15:55:20 -0000

>needs or how to move it forward.

The current draft just tries to lay out the ways that mailing lists
can screw up in the presence of EAI mail.  It suggests some possible
ways to deal with it, but carefully does not recommend anything, since
we have no experience on which to base advice.

Assuming that people generally agree with ths list of problems,
I think it's pretty much ready to go as an Informational RFC if
people want.  I'm happy to keep holding the pen.

R's,
John

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 12:22:43 -0400

--On Monday, June 11, 2012 15:55 +0000 John Levine
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> expire later this week.  In my personal opinion, John has
>> done a good job of creating a starting point, but, if the WG
>> cannot or will not engage on it, I don't see how to give him
>> the input he needs or how to move it forward.
> 
> The current draft just tries to lay out the ways that mailing
> lists can screw up in the presence of EAI mail.  It suggests
> some possible ways to deal with it, but carefully does not
> recommend anything, since we have no experience on which to
> base advice.
> 

I actually agree.  But I don't, as co-chair, know how to make a
determination about "what people want" --one that Joseph and I
can defend to the IESG-- unless some significant number of
people (more than the two of us plus Pete) have actually read
the draft and are willing to comment.

    john

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:56:16 +0200

> the draft and are willing to comment.

I wrote to John privately that I, put a little more nicely, have read 
the draft and could not find anything to add, and could not summon the 
energy to look harder.

Writing to John I put the emphasis more on my inability than on the fine 
quality of the draft. I had not seen the i-word yet then. I think the 
draft is a fine informational summary of all that is known about mailing 
lists and EAI.

Arnt

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 13:20:54 -0400

--On Monday, June 11, 2012 16:26 +0200 Arnt Gulbrandsen
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Uh... maybe I've forgotten something? Simpledowngrade has some
> minor text issues, but I had no substantive issues noted, and
> a quick scan of
> http://www.ietf.org/jabber/logs/eai/2012-05-14.html doesn't
> show anything obvious?

I'd rather get a version up with those minor text issues
incorporated so that we can do a final, pre-IESG, WG LC and
review.  But on a scale of "how much needs to be done before WG
LC", simpledowngrade is certainly in the best shape of the four
documents.

   john

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 20:09:12 +0200

On 06/11/2012 07:20 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
> review.

I'll try to get that done tomorrow.

> But on a scale of "how much needs to be done before WG

An unexpected benefit of its brevity and simplicity.

Arnt

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 22:11:17 +0200

> An unexpected benefit of its brevity and simplicity.

It's best to enjoy one's luck while it lasts.

I've put together the -05 draft tonight instead of tomorrow. WGLC time.

Arnt

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:59:37 +0100

> Hi.

Hi John,

> needs or how to move it forward.

It is a good document and I think it would be better to publish it. I will send my review in a separate email.

> with destination participants that might or might support EAI

That would be fine, the mailing list document is already Informational.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:40:53 -0400

--On Monday, June 11, 2012 11:03 -0400 Joseph Yee
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Personal thought on mailing list spec is mix of (1) and (3),
> where we should review and document the lack of deployment
> experience into the mailing list spec.
> 

If you (or anyone else) has specific suggestions, please send
text.

Warning to the WG: If we get a couple of good reviews and John
respins the document if the comments necessitate that, we could
start WG Last Call on mailinglist by the end of this week.  That
Last Call won't be for very long so, it you have any possible
interest in the mailinglist document, please read it now and get
any comments to the list.

    john

---

From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 16:08:27 +0900

Hello John,

I have read the draft, after having had some problems finding it because 
it is expired. I suggest that it be resubmitted ASAP to make it easier 
to comment.

The draft definitely needs some work because it refers to 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-duerst-mailto-bis-10 which is now RFC 
6068, in ways where that makes quite a bit of a difference. The stuff I 
have found, not surprisingly, is mostly in the area of 
URIs/IRIs/mailto:. I'm willing to help but I'm even more willing to have 
the authors just go ahead and try to fix things.

The Introduction is long. I suggest creating some subsections, such as 
"Mailing Lists in General" and "Mailing Lists with Internationalized 
Addresses".

In the following:
   "Of course, with mailing lists, the
    original sender usually does not know if the message was successfully
    delivered to any list members, or if it was undeliverable to some."
I would find it more natural to say "if the message was successfully 
delivered to all list members", or if the current meaning is to be kept, 
to reword it as "if the message was undeliverable to some or all of the 
list members".

In 2.1.,  Fully EAI lists, it says:
   "but there is no way to tell whether a subscriber with an ASCII
    address can receive EAI mail short of sending an EAI probe or
    confirmation message and somehow finding out whether it was
    delivered."
This is true, but could be worded somewhat more positively. These days, 
the mailing lists I'm used to send subscription confirmation messages to 
potential subscribers to reduce subscriptions by spammers. Such messages 
can easily made to be EAI messages, which should solve the EAI probe 
problem and the spam reduction problem in one go.

End of 2.2: "type of of session" -> "type of session".

2.2 in general: It occurred to be that one way of implementing this is 
to have two mailing list addresses, or in some way almost two mailing 
list, one old-style and one EAI, where submitted messages are 
automatically shared. Or is this a bad idea for some reason? If not, a 
more explicit description might help.

3.1:
    "The current specification for
    mailto does not permit unencoded UTF-8 characters":
That's wrong. RFC 6068 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6068) allows 'raw' 
Unicode characters everywhere except the LHS of the address,
and even for that part, RFC 6068 already "does the right thing",
although with a "reserved" caveat. Of course, 'raw' Unicode can only
be used in the IRI form, for URIs, %-encoding based on UTF-8 is needed.

    "although work has
    been proposed to extend or more likely replace mailto in order to
    permit this."
At one point, there has indeed been quite some support for a replacement 
for mailto, but I don't think we should try to predict the future, so 
please remove "more likely". (My personal prediction would be that we 
will be just fine with mailto:, but that's not important here.)

   "Schemes that permit both URI and IRI forms should use the URI-encoded
    form described in [RFC3987].  Future work may extend  these header
    fields or define replacements to directly support non-encoded UTF-8
    in IRIs (for example, [I-D.duerst-mailto-bis]), but in the absence of
    such extension or replacement, non-ASCII characters can only appear
    within when encoded as ASCII."
This is a bit off. Whether IRIs can be used in List header fields 
without transforming them to URIs first and foremost depends on the 
definition of these list header fields (RFC 2369, RFC 2919). Updates to 
these RFCs are in the works, and I have done an Apps Directorate review 
for one of them and pointed out that it would be a good idea to address 
internationalization (which would essentially amount to saying "you can 
use IRIs in these list headers if it's an EAI message".). I have cc'ed 
the current lead author of the updating documents.

   "The traditional encoding technique is to use a pair of hex digits
    preceded by a percent sign, but percent signs have been used
    informally in mail addresses to do source routing.  Although few mail
    systems still permit source routing, a lot of mail software still
    forbids or escapes characters formerly used for source routing, which
    can lead to unfortunate interactions with percent-encoded URIs or any
    URI that includes one of those characters."
I don't like the "the traditional encoding technique", because it 
suggests there may be a choice. There is no choice, this is clear both 
in RFC 3986 and 3987. Also, if correctly implemented, there is no change 
that '%' characters get into actual email addresses. I suggest that this 
text be reworded to talk mainly about the caution required by 
implementations.

   "Note that discussion  on
    whether internationalized domain names should be percent-encoded or
    puny-coded, is ongoing; see [I-D.duerst-iri-bis]."
This point is no longer under discussion in the IRI WG. There's no 
essential change from RFC 3986, where these two forms already are allowed.

   "Such filters and tests may not
    properly compare a non-ASCII value which has been encoded
    into ASCII."
I think that nobody knows how to compare *a* value, there's always two 
needed for a comparison.

Last line of section 3:
    "and losing the ability to respond to the submitter."
I'd suggest to change this into
    "and losing the ability to respond directly to the submitter."
or
    "and losing the ability to respond to the submitter only."
or
    "and losing the ability to respond to the submitter if she is
     not subscribed to the mailing list."

Regards,    Martin.

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 07:15:41 -0400

> I have read the draft, after having had some problems finding it because it
> is expired. I suggest that it be resubmitted ASAP to make it easier to
> comment.

I find this very puzzling to hear, nowadays... from anyone, but
especially from a seasoned IETF participant.

One can always get the latest version of any draft, even if it's expired, here:
   http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-eai-mailinglistbis

One can get a specific version, by appending the version number:
   http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-eai-mailinglistbis-01

For draft associated with working groups, one can also find this by
going to the working group tools page:
   http://tools.ietf.org/wg/eai

Expired drafts are clearly listed separately, and clicking on the
version number gets you to the tool HTML page, above.

It might or might not be otherwise useful to post a new version so the
draft is not listed as "expired".  But it is not hard to find, in any
case.

Barry

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 10:49:29 -0400

Martin,

A few comments (personal, not a co-chair except as noted).  I'll
let John L respond to the others and get a new draft posted when
he is ready.  

<co-chair hat=on>
WG members: some of this is controversial.  If you have
comments, make them.  WG LC on this document will start as soon
as John gets a new version posted (even if only to avoid WG LC
on an expired draft).
</co-chair>

--On Tuesday, June 19, 2012 16:08 +0900 "\"Martin J. Dürst\""
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> 2.2 in general: It occurred to be that one way of implementing
> this is to have two mailing list addresses, or in some way
> almost two mailing list, one old-style and one EAI, where
> submitted messages are automatically shared. Or is this a bad
> idea for some reason? If not, a more explicit description
> might help.

I'm not certain I understand this.  If I do, it is either
equivalent to advise to simply not permit UTF-8 addresses in
mailing lists or any EAI-requiring messages to be posted to
them) or having the expectation of having lots of messages
delivered twice.  Another reading would take us back to
requiring that every UTF-8 address be accompanied by an
alternative, 5821-conforming, address, which takes us right back
to all of the issues associated with dual addresses and
in-transit downgrading, including the security-threat issues,
that we agreed to drop.  Or am I misunderstanding the suggestion?

> That's wrong. RFC 6068 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6068)
> allows 'raw' Unicode characters everywhere except the LHS of
> the address,

Sadly, "%" has a different historical interpretation for email
local-parts than it does in URUs.  That isn't a problem as long
as all of the decoding and encoding rules are followed
carefully.  But, having just had another bad experience that
appears to be due to moving from email address to MAILTO URI to
email address fouling up "+" in a local part, I have no
confidence at all about proper handling of "%".

You and John note another aspect of this issue in the text and
elsewhere in your message.

>...
> This point is no longer under discussion in the IRI WG.
> There's no essential change from RFC 3986, where these two
> forms already are allowed.

<co-chair hat=on>
I strongly prefer that we not drag the IRI debate into this WG.
"No longer under discussion in the WG" is different from
"approved in the IETF.  If we do have to make an IRI discussion,
or anything that is contingent on what that WG is doing,
prerequisite to making progress on the EAI mailinglist document,
I will propose to abandon that document until and unless the IRI
work produces IETF consensus Standards Track documents.
</co-chair>

>...

Thanks for the careful reading.

best,
   john

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Jun 2012 20:08:50 -0000

Thanks for your note.  I'll recycle the draft shortly.

>more explicit description might help.

I don't see what problem that would solve.  It's easy enough when a
message arrives to look at it and see whether it's an EAI message or
not.

The hard parts are knowing which subscribers accept EAI and which
don't, and for EAI messages to be sent to non-EAI subscribers, how to
downgrade them.  I suppose you could have two subscription addresses, one
for EAI and one for non-EAI, but even a weenie like me knows that's a
dreadful user interface that people will get wrong all the time.

R's,
John

---

From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:14:51 +0900

> dreadful user interface that people will get wrong all the time.

I guess that addresses the "is this a bad idea for some reason?".

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:43:26 +0900

> especially from a seasoned IETF participant.

Hello Barry,

Thanks for the "seasoned IETF participant"!

Of course I knew how to find the expired draft. Otherwise, I wouldn't 
have commented :-).

> version number gets you to the tool HTML page, above.

I looked at http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/eai/, where the expired 
drafts are not listed. I found the draft by checking for drafts with 
"eai" in them directly from http://tools.ietf.org. I'll try to use tools 
even more, in particular the WG overview page. Thanks for the tip.

> draft is not listed as "expired".  But it is not hard to find, in any

It's relieving to hear something close to "don't bother to resubmit a 
draft just because it has expired recently" from an AD.

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 21:06:11 -0400

> draft just because it has expired recently" from an AD.

:-)
Well, you'll also frequently hear (or see) me say, "Versions are cheap."  I
generally would rather see another version.  But I'd like to see a version
that has substantive changes -- and I suspect this doc will, soon enough --
and not see an update pushed out *just* to refresh the expriation.

b

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 08:55:07 +0200

On 06/20/2012 02:14 AM, Martin J. Dürst wrote:
>> I suppose you could have two subscription addresses, one

I quite agree.

Also, I think that odd characters aren't worth time and attention, 
because they don't work reliably in general email addresses. Why bother 
writing about what won't work anyway?

(Anecdote alert: I personally have even given up on + since so many web 
forms tell me that [email-masked] is syntactically 
invalid. + isn't very odd as characters go.)

Arnt

---

From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:08:22 +0900

Hello John,

Many thanks for your comments.

> as John gets a new version posted (even if only to avoid WG LC

(Given this warning, I was rather afraid there would be a long list of 
thorny issues, but they all seem rather easy.)

> that we agreed to drop.  Or am I misunderstanding the suggestion?

John Levine got it right, and showed that it wasn't really such a good idea.

> confidence at all about proper handling of "%".

I have absolutely nothing against a very strong warning on this issue, 
because I agree that it is indeed a problem.

> I strongly prefer that we not drag the IRI debate into this WG.

I very much agree. That's why I don't think any comments about progress 
(or non-progress) in other WGs should be in our drafts.

> "approved in the IETF.

Of course. I may not have been clear enough, but I didn't want to 
propose to replace "discussion is ongoing" with "no longer under 
discussion". None of this should be in the document.

> If we do have to make an IRI discussion,

I think there is no need to have an "IRI discussion". There is RFC 3987, 
which is Standards Track.

Regards,   Martin.