Subject: Prague meeting report

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:56:42 +1000

Apologies for the extended delay in getting these out.

We met in Prague from about 10am till around 5:30pm, with the  
following people present;

Mark Nottingham
Julian Reschke
Yves Lafon
Henrik Nordström
Yngve Pettersen
Bernard Desruisseaux
Alex Melnikov

Discussion focused mainly around the issues list <http://www.w3.org/ 
Protocols/HTTP/1.1/rfc2616bis/issues/>; a list of action items  
resulting from it can be found at <http://www.w3.org/2007/03/18- 
rfc2616-minutes.html>.

There was also discussion about the MTI requirements, both on Sunday  
during the meeting, at the reception afterwards, and in the APPAREA  
meeting on Monday (I gave a short presentation about what we've been  
doing). One possible solution that came up was to document the  
security properties of existing HTTP mechanisms (e.g., Basic Auth,  
Digest Auth, SSL/TLS, Cookies) to allow users of the protocol to make  
more informed decisions. This seemed to have broad support when  
discussed.

We also covered the proposed charter briefly; discusssion was very  
similar to that on-list, and I have an action to update the proposal  
based upon comments.

Many thanks to Ted Hardy for finding a room for us.

--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/

---

From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:48:12 -0700 (PDT)

Is there HTTP related activity proposed/planned for Chicago.

Perhaps I missed it.

Hard to justify the expense of attending the IETF meeting in Chicago w/o
an agenda.

Thanks,
  Dave Morris

---

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:10:37 +1000

Jabber minutes of the APPAREA meeting at <http://www.ietf.org/ 
meetings/ietf-logs/apparea/2007-03-19.html>; HTTP discussion starts  
at 04:31:31.

On 25/04/2007, at 9:56 PM, Mark Nottingham wrote:

> There was also discussion about the MTI requirements, both on  
> Sunday during the meeting, at the reception afterwards, and in the  
> APPAREA meeting on Monday (I gave a short presentation about what  
> we've been doing). One possible solution that came up was to  
> document the security properties of existing HTTP mechanisms (e.g.,  
> Basic Auth, Digest Auth, SSL/TLS, Cookies) to allow users of the  
> protocol to make more informed decisions. This seemed to have broad  
> support when discussed.
>
> similar to that on-list, and I have an action to update the  
> proposal based upon comments.
>

---

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:10:30 +1000

> Is there HTTP related activity proposed/planned for Chicago.

It's been discussed as a possibility for a while; Prague was deemed  
not to attract the right size of crowd, and we were between ADs.

> Hard to justify the expense of attending the IETF meeting in  
> Chicago w/o an agenda.

See <http://www.ietf.org/meetings/69-cutoff_dates.html>; the hard  
cutoff for scheduling a BoF is June 11.

Since you bring it up, the biggest question over starting work in  
this area is whether there are appropriate resources available; i.e.,  
qualified people willing to give their time to edit documents, review  
documents, chair a group, etc. -- and therefore this is likely to be  
the focus of discussion there.

Although we have a small core of people working now, that's not  
necessarily enough to sustain a Working Group through the process,  
especially when revising such a highly visible specification.

One interesting bit of advice that I got in Prague was that if we're  
at the point where one person leaving can cause the effort to fail,  
maybe it should fail anyway. I can't say that we're *not* at that  
point right now. Between now and Chicago, I'd hope that we can make a  
more definitive statement one way or another.

Cheers,

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:39:27 +0100

Mark Nottingham wrote:

>> Hard to justify the expense of attending the IETF meeting in  Chicago 
>> w/o an agenda.
>

I think it would be worth having a BOF in Chicago. At least this will 
help to determine if there is enough people interested in helping out 
with work.