Subject: draft-ietf-httpbis-jfv: what's next

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2016 15:16:34 +0200

Hi there,

(see 
<https://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-httpbis-jfv-latest.html> 
and <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-jfv/>)

So when we made this a WG work item, the plan was to come up with *some* 
standard syntax, not necessarily the one proposed in the draft (based on 
JSON).

We have discussed JSON a lot, and it definitively has a variety of 
problems, thus discussing other formats (like the one proposed by 
Poul-Henning) makes a lot of sense.

However... there are early adopters out there, referencing the now dead 
pre-WG draft, such as:

> https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/WD-reporting-1-20160407/#header
> https://www.w3.org/TR/clear-site-data/#header
> https://wicg.github.io/feature-policy/#feature-policy-http-header-field

...and my understanding is that their authors are willing to stick with 
JSON, willing to live with the known problems, and, in particular, not 
willing to switch to something else at this point. (Ilya?)

Now we can't have these specs rely on an abandoned Internet Draft, right?

So what do we do?

a) "finish" draft-ietf-httpbis-jfv, documenting known issues, and 
publish this as informational or experimental?

b) conclude work on this draft, and let me continues to finish my pre-WG 
draft (with the same goals as above)

c) give up, and let the users of the draft figure out a solution?

Best regards, Julian

---

From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2016 13:22:31 +0000

--------

>c) give up, and let the users of the draft figure out a solution?

+1

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
[email-masked]         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

---

From: Patrick McManus <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2016 15:26:31 +0200

Julian, what course of action do you advocate?

On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 3:16 PM, Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> (see <https://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-httpbis-jfv-latest.html>
> a) "finish" draft-ietf-httpbis-jfv, documenting known issues, and publish
> this as informational or experimental?
>

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2016 15:35:43 +0200

On 2016-10-06 15:26, Patrick McManus wrote:
> ...

I listed them in the order of my preference :-)

Best regards, Julian

---

From: Willy Tarreau <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2016 08:05:31 +0200

Hi Julian,

> Now we can't have these specs rely on an abandoned Internet Draft, right?

No I disagree with you here. Drafts are drafts. They always have early
adopters (otherwise they don't make progress), but early adopters know
what risks they are taking. Otherwise you end up censoring yourself when
writing a draft just in case someone would implement it, which is not
acceptable at all.

> this as informational or experimental?

It could be an option at least not to lose all the work done on this and
to serve as input for future designs (specifically the known issues). But
I don't know if that requires lots of work on your side or not. It could
end up like those few RFCs saying "foobar considered harmful", documenting
a design choice and its impacts and side effects.

> c) give up, and let the users of the draft figure out a solution?

Well these two ones are not exclusive of the first one. If it is possible
to "flush the pipe" with option a) without spending too much effort on it,
the lowest the effort, the highest c) becomes prevalent. And in all cases,
b) definitely is up to you (I think).

Maybe the draft should be renamed to something like "The limitations of
using JSON for header field values" or something like this, explain the
design, the fact that there are known adopters, and enumerate the known
issues without too much details (just to discourage future adopters unless
they're fine with these limitations).

Just my two cents,
Willy

---

From: Ilya Grigorik <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2016 11:32:29 -0700

> willing to switch to something else at this point. (Ilya?)

"Not willing" is too strong, I think. Perhaps a more accurate description
is: aware of the limitations previously discussed; cautiously moving
forward despite said limitations because there are pains that we need to
address [1]; willing to consider concrete alternative proposals if and when
they become available and have reasonable support from community -- i.e.
not a spaceship design that we can use in >5 years.

[1] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/225#issue-170537461

---

From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2016 06:21:52 +0000

--------

>willing to consider concrete alternative proposals if and when

I would love to hear your comments on this:

	https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-kamp-httpbis-structure/

---

From: Ilya Grigorik <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2016 09:46:36 -0700

>         https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-kamp-httpbis-structure/

Ah, didn't see this come through earlier.. thanks, will review.