Subject: [VCARDDAV] proposed IETF charter

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 09:27:46 -0800

Hi,
   here is the proposed wg charter, based on Chris Newman initial  
strawman. Please comment.  There will be a vcarddav dinner this tuesday.

Marc.

====================================
vcarddav: vCard and vCardDAV Working Group

Chair(s):
   Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
   Kurt Zeilenga <[email-masked]>

Applications Area Director(s):
   Chris Newman <[email-masked]>
   Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>

Applications Area Advisor:
   Chris Newman <[email-masked]>

Mailing Lists:
General Discussion:  vcarddav.ietf.org
To Subscribe:  https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vcarddav
Archive: http://www1.ietf.org/pipermail/vcarddav

Description of Working Group:

A personal address book (PAB) contains a read/write copy of  
attributes describing a user's interpersonal contacts. This is  
distinct from a directory which contains a primarily read-only copy  
of users within an organization. While these two data objects share a  
large number of common attributes, their use and access patterns are  
fundamentally different. The IETF has a standards-track data format  
(vCard) which has been successfully used to interchange both personal- 
address-book and user directory entry data objects. However, due to  
the lack of a standard access control model for LDAP, the lack of a  
standard LDAP schema and DIT-model for vCard PAB objects, and the  
different access patterns for PAB data (as opposed to directory  
data), the use of LDAP as an access protocol for PABs has had mixed  
results in practice.  Moreover, the vCard format has been extended by  
many parties and the current specification is ambiguous for some  
objects.

If the deployed protocols related to interpersonal communication are  
viewed as a component-based system, there are a number of points in  
the system that would benefit from a standards track access protocol  
for personal address book data. This includes:

* Mail User Agents use PAB data to assist outgoing email addressing  
and may use vCard attachments to transport PAB data between users.
* Calendar User Agents use PAB data to invite attendees to events
* Instant Messaging User Agents can provide additional information  
about a user's buddies if they can be associated with a user's PAB  
entry.
* A server-side Sieve engine with the spamtest/virustest extension  
would benefit from access to a user's PAB to provide per-user white  
list capabilities.
* Various deployed challenge-response mechanisms for email present in  
Mail Transfer Agents, such as TMDA, would be improved by a PAB-based  
white list.
* Mobile device synchronization software might be simplified by a  
single cross-platform PAB access protocol.
* A voice conference or IP telephony system could access a user's PAB  
to provide name-based or nickname-based dialing.

This WG will produce the following outputs:

(1) A revision of the vCard specification (RFC2426) at proposed  
standard status. This revision shall include other vCard standardized  
extensions (RFC 2739, 4770) and extensions assisting synchronization  
technologies (for example, a per-entry UUID or per-attribute sequence  
number).  Other extensions shall be considered either in the base  
specification or in additional documents.

(2) An address book access protocol leveraging the vCard data  
format.  The Internet-draft draft-daboo-carddav will be the starting  
point.
The WG is explicitly cautioned to keep the base specification feature  
set small with an adequate extension mechanism, as failure to do so  
was a problem for previous PAB efforts (ACAP).  The WG will consider  
arguments of the form "feature X must be in the base feature set  
because ..."
with great skepticism.

These documents will consider security implications carefully. The WG  
will consider developing a mechanism that provides the ability to  
check if an email address (or im address, etc) is in the user's PAB  
without providing unrestricted access to all of the user's PAB data.  
The WG should also consider developing a mechanism that allows the  
user to grant this limited permission to a third-party service (such  
as a server-based Sieve engine) for white-list purposes.

Once the primary outputs are complete, the WG will consider the  
following secondary outputs:

(3) An XML schema which is semantically identical to vCard in all  
ways and can be mechanically translated to and from vCard format  
without loss of data. While vCard has deployed successfully and will  
remain the preferred  interchange format, a standard XML schema which  
preserves vCard semantics might make vCard data more accessible to  
XML-centric technologies such as AJAX and XSLT.  Such a standard  
format would be preferable to multiple proprietary XML schemas,  
particularly if vCard semantics were lost by some of them and a lossy  
gateway problem resulted.
(4) Identifying useful deployed vCard vendor extensions and creating  
standards track versions of those extensions.
(5) Cooperate with the Sieve WG to produce a Sieve extension for  
address book Sieve tests.
(6) LDAP mapping to the new vCard format without loss of data.

Goals and milestones:
Q1 2008 Address book access protocol draft
Q1 2008 vCard new revision draft
Q2 2008 submit to IESG both drafts
Q2 2008 XML schema
Q2 2008 LDAP schema
Q3 2008 vcard extensions
Q4 2008 submit to IESG remaining drafts

_______________________________________________
VCARDDAV mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vcarddav

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:28:15 -0500

>    here is the proposed wg charter, based on Chris Newman initial strawman.
> Please comment.  There will be a vcarddav dinner this tuesday.

I like the charter.  My only comment is that I think the milestones are 
unreasonably aggressive by, maybe, six months.

> Q4 2008 submit to IESG remaining drafts

I think it's reasonable to try to get the lot done by June 2009.  But if the ADs 
are willing to accept these milestones, hey, go for it.

Barry

--
Barry Leiba, STSM, Internet Messaging Technology  ([email-masked])
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/l/leiba
http://www.research.ibm.com/spam

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:31:11 +0000

Barry Leiba wrote:

>> strawman.
> I like the charter.

+1

> My only comment is that I think the milestones are unreasonably 
> aggressive by, maybe, six months.

+10!

> I think it's reasonable to try to get the lot done by June 2009.  But 
> if the ADs are willing to accept these milestones, hey, go for it.

:-)

---

From: Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:36:48 -0800

Hi Barry,

--On December 3, 2007 1:28:15 PM -0500 Barry Leiba <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> I think it's reasonable to try to get the lot done by June 2009.  But if
> the ADs are willing to accept these milestones, hey, go for it.

Well personally I believe CARDDAV is close to being done, and I would not 
want to see it take six months before going to IESG. The question is should 
it be tied to the vCard revision work? Given that our scope for that is 
fairly limited, I don't see any changes we do to vCard affecting CARDDAV 
directly.

-- 
Cyrus Daboo

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:44:09 -0500

Cyrus says...
> Well personally I believe CARDDAV is close to being done, and I would not want
> to see it take six months before going to IESG. The question is should it be
> tied to the vCard revision work? Given that our scope for that is fairly
> limited, I don't see any changes we do to vCard affecting CARDDAV directly.

I'm not suggesting that *nothing* can come early.  I'm only saying that the 
schedule seems packed with things that are all being worked on at once.  It might 
well make sense to have the WG chartered in February (likely the earliest that it 
can happen), to have a month of discussion on the first document and a two-week 
WGLC (if it really is sufficiently baked now), and to send it to the IESG at the 
end of March, or some time in April.  Which is even more aggressive than the 
charter says.

It's just been my experience that WGs can't do too much at once, and that the 
schedule that's listed is risky.  It's not a big deal... and I think the ADs like 
it when things come in ahead of schedule, rather than behind it.

Barry

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 11:01:16 -0800

I agree that the milestones are too fast. especially if we want to  
have some level of developer/implementation comments before going to  
IESG, so that we had people who tried to implement it.

As you are saying, if we do faster, then great...

I'll wait for more comments on the charter and then update the  
charter based on all received comments.

Marc.

Le 07-12-03 à 10:44, Barry Leiba a écrit :

> I'm not suggesting that *nothing* can come early.  I'm only saying  
> that the schedule seems packed with things that are all being  
> worked on at once.  It might well make sense to have the WG  
> chartered in February (likely the earliest that it can happen), to  
> have a month of discussion on the first document and a two-week  
> WGLC (if it really is sufficiently baked now), and to send it to  
> the IESG at the end of March, or some time in April.  Which is even  
> more aggressive than the charter says.
>
> It's just been my experience that WGs can't do too much at once,  
> and that the schedule that's listed is risky.  It's not a big  
> deal... and I think the ADs like it when things come in ahead of  
> schedule, rather than behind it.
>
> Barry
>
>

-----
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