Subject: [art] Protocol Action: 'Message Disposition Notification' to Internet Standard (draft-ietf-appsawg-mdn-3798bis-16.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2016 08:54:26 -0800

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Message Disposition Notification'
  (draft-ietf-appsawg-mdn-3798bis-16.txt) as Internet Standard

This document is the product of the ART Area General Applications Working
Group.

The IESG contact persons are Alexey Melnikov, Ben Campbell and Alissa
Cooper.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-appsawg-mdn-3798bis/

Technical Summary

This draft intends to obsolete RFC 3798, and advance to Internet Standard. 

Abstract:

   This memo defines a MIME content-type that may be used by a mail user
   agent (MUA) or electronic mail gateway to report the disposition of a
   message after it has been successfully delivered to a recipient.
   This content-type is intended to be machine-processable.  Additional
   message header fields are also defined to permit Message Disposition
   Notifications (MDNs) to be requested by the sender of a message.  The
   purpose is to extend Internet Mail to support functionality often
   found in other messaging systems, such as X.400 and the proprietary
   "LAN-based" systems, and often referred to as "read receipts,"
   "acknowledgements", or "receipt notifications."  The intention is to
   do this while respecting privacy concerns, which have often been
   expressed when such functions have been discussed in the past.

   Because many messages are sent between the Internet and other
   messaging systems (such as X.400 or the proprietary "LAN-based"
   systems), the MDN protocol is designed to be useful in a multi-
   protocol messaging environment.  To this end, the protocol described
   in this memo provides for the carriage of "foreign" addresses, in
   addition to those normally used in Internet Mail.  Additional
   attributes may also be defined to support "tunneling" of foreign
   notifications through Internet Mail.

Working Group Summary

The document received general "Yes, this should happen" support at WG 
meetings, but unfortunately very little came in the way of active 
review.  The working group appears to have trusted that the authors were 
doing good work and knew what they were doing and, if there were any 
problems found, they were not reported.  MAAWG was also solicited for 
comments, but none were received (that I know of).  In any case, there 
was no objection to its adoption by and publication through APPSAWG.

There were no significant points of controversy or other difficulty.

Document Quality

   RFC 3798 is widely implemented. This update seeks to advance
   to Internet Standard.

Personnel

   The draft shepherd is Murray Kucherawy
   The responsible AD is Ben Campbell