Subject: IESG defers discussion of the format document for two weeks

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 07:18:05 -0700

Greetings again. So, it turns out that the IESG won't consider the 
Atom format document today, as we had hoped. As you can see at 
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=view_id&dTag=11964&rfc_flag=0>, 
one of the Security Area Directors, Russ Housley, put a "defer" vote 
in. Procedurally, this means that he wants to wait for another 
telechat in order to think more about the document. "Defer" votes 
aren't common but aren't rare, and they can mean anything. And, a 
document can only be deferred once (that is, the IESG cannot use 
"defer" votes to keep ignoring a draft).

As you can also see from the ID tracker, we have a bunch of "no 
objection" votes and a couple of "discuss" votes. We need to clear 
all the "discuss" votes before we are accepted as a standard, but so 
far, these are all reasonable things that RobJoe can do in the -10 
draft. Other IESG members may have other "discuss" votes later on, 
and those can be more difficult, but we'll see when it happens.

In other words, this isn't bad news, just a delay. Tim and I have 
already opened a line of communications with Russ and Sam about 
security issues, so if they want to ask questions or probe further 
before voting, they can.

Stay tuned, and it won't be that long until we know for sure.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

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From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 08:28:42 -0700

On Jun 23, 2005, at 7:18 AM, Paul Hoffman wrote:

> In other words, this isn't bad news, just a delay.

Fully disagree.  The world has many implementors eagerly awaiting the  
arrival of Atom so they can start using it.  If there are problems  
that require repair, I don't want to wait two more weeks to find out  
about them.  This is very disappointing. -Tim

---

From: "Scott Hollenbeck" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:41:10 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Bray [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 11:29 AM
> To: Paul Hoffman
> Cc: Atom WG
> Subject: Re: IESG defers discussion of the format document 
> for two weeks
> 
> 
> 

ADs often defer when they haven't been able to review and digest the
document.  I put this one on the agenda almost two weeks ago to give
everyone plenty of time; I don't know why Russ has been unable to get
through it.  He did tell me that he hopes to have his comments (if any)
recorded before the week of the 7th.

-Scott-

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 08:50:03 -0700

In my previous post, I said "RobJoe" when I should have said "Rob and 
Mark". Also, I said "Russ and Sam" when I should have said "the two 
Security Area Directors, Russ Housley and Sam Hartman" (that is, not 
our WG secretary, Sam Ruby).

Also, I agree with Tim that waiting two weeks unnecessarily is a 
bummer for anxious implementers. I guess I'm just used to much worse 
things happening in the IESG in the past, like really long delays.

--Paul Hoffman, Director

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From: Eric Scheid <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 02:12:56 +1000

> about them.  This is very disappointing. -Tim

we can start with these two...

<https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=view_comment&id=
36536>

<https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=view_comment&id=
36539>

e.

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From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:21:38 -0700

On Jun 23, 2005, at 9:12 AM, Eric Scheid wrote:

>> If there are problems

Nope, these are non-controversial editorial improvements which need  
not slow us down, they can go into that last draft that we'd have to  
do anyhow to fix the errors that have been turned up and put in the  
contributors and so on.  Specifically, they want us to make it  
clearer that yes, we do have two similar-looking instances of type=  
with different rules, and to make it clear that to dereference a IRI  
you have to turn it into a URI.  The person who put the "defer" on  
didn't raise these issues.  -Tim

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 18:01:15 +0900

At 03:21 05/06/24, Tim Bray wrote:
 >> <https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi? 
command=view_comment&id=>> 36536>
 >>
 >> <https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi? 
command=view_comment&id=>> 36539>
 >
 >Nope, these are non-controversial editorial improvements

Mostly, yes.

 >which need

Some care (and some headstart) is nonetheless helpful.
Ted at 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=view_comment&id=36539
says " This is true for any scheme which does not support IRIs natively."
This is slightly inaccurate; schemes are irrelevant here, it's protocols
that count (which is the word used in most of the rest of the text).

Regards,    Martin.

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 07:38:00 -0700

At 6:01 PM +0900 6/24/05, Martin Duerst wrote:
>Ted at https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=view_comment&id=36539

Martin's right; I should have said "protocols" instead of "scheme" in
the text above.  I have adjusted the discuss text in the tracker to
fix that.
			Ted

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From: James M Snell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:36:58 -0700

I hesitated posting this but someone has to start what is bound to be an 
inevitable conversation on this list.... so here goes

Whatever your opinion of it, Microsoft's announcement is significant and 
important.  I've posted some thoughts on what it could mean for Atom if 
Microsoft doesn't play fair on my IBM developerWorks blog here 
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog_comments.jspa?blog=351&entry=84636.  

Regarding the list extensions themselves, technically they're actually 
rather boring ;-) ... however, the fact that they were released under a 
creative commons license is very promising.  Further, I see nothing in 
the spec that would keep it from working with Atom.. again, a very 
promising thing. 

My key concern, however, is the potential for folks in the Atom 
community overreacting to all of this.  There is a lot of momentum 
behind RSS right now and coming out too strongly against RSS simply 
because we feel there are technical and process deficiencies associated 
with it is not going to do this community any favors.  Let's make sure 
that we're focusing on getting Atom out the door as quickly as we can; 
that we're demonstrating the value of Atom with real implementations 
rather than rhetoric; and that we work on educating developers on the 
advantages of Atom relative to RSS with specific use cases and code 
examples.

- James

---

From: Danny Ayers <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 13:46:37 +0200

On 6/25/05, James M Snell <[email-masked]> wrote:

[snip]

> http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog_comments.jspa?blog=351&entry=84636.

I generally agree. Strongly, when you talk of the best advocacy being
through demonstration.
 
The MS extension is a little unusual in that it impacts other elements
(giving them a datatype), it's an architectural forms kind of thing.
But I *think* it'll still play ok in Atom. Hopefully someone will have
time to look deeper. Has anyone done Yahoo!'s Media RSS as Atom yet,
btw?

Other comments & some links at:
http://dannyayers.com/archives/2005/06/24/ms-rss/

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 

http://dannyayers.com

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From: Bill de hÓra <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 21:00:09 +0100

James M Snell wrote:

> rather boring ;-)

Having lists that can live outside the server or application they were 
created for is a big deal. If we were talking about the next step in 
bringing the web to its full potential, then machine readable lists are 
that step. There's oceans and oceans of data in list form.

cheers
Bill

---

From: James M Snell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 13:36:42 -0700

Bill de hÓra wrote:

>
> James M Snell wrote:
>
>> Regarding the list extensions themselves, technically they're 
>> actually rather boring ;-)
>
>
> bringing the web to its full potential, then machine readable lists 
> are that step. There's oceans and oceans of data in list form.
>
> cheers
> Bill
>
>
>
No doubt.  I didn't say the applications that could be built with the 
extensions are boring... I said the extensions themselves were boring.  
In other words, while I (and quite a few others it would appear) would 
have done it differently, they're so minimal and simple that there's 
really not a lot to debate about 'em.  The real question is going to be 
whether or not MS will make changes to the approach based on community 
feedback. 

- James

---

From: Bill de hÓra <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 21:55:29 +0100

James M Snell wrote:

> really not a lot to debate about 'em.  

I bet someone said that about line feeds once, now look where we are :)

cheers
Bill