Re: WG Review: Recharter of Hypertext Transfer Protocol Bis (httpbis)

On 02/24/2012 01:24 AM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> On Feb 23, 2012, at 5:18 PM, Tim Bray wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 5:13 PM, Roy T. Fielding<fielding@gbiv.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> How many times do we have to do this before we declare insanity?
>>> I don't care how much risk it adds to the HTTP charter.  They are
>>> all just meaningless deadlines anyway.  If we want HTTP to have
>>> something other than Basic (1993) and Digest (1995) authentication,
>>> then it had better be part of *this* charter so that the proposals
>>> can address them.
>>
>> Well, Digest already isn't used by anyone :)
>
> A popular misconception because it works unseen.  See tools.ietf.org
>
>> Seriously, someone needs to propose some charter language or this
>> discussion is a no-op.  -Tim
>
> "Proposals for new HTTP authentication schemes are in scope."

How would a plan like the following look to folks:

- httpbis is chartered to include auth mechanism work as
   per the above (or whatever text goes into the charter)
- that'll generate a slew of proposals, some good, some
   bad, some better-than-current and some too complex
- plan is for httpbis to pick something (one or more if
   they want, but one better-than-current one is the goal)
- give all the above a short timeframe (this year, pick
   which to work on at the same time as re-chartering for
   the details of HTTP/2.0 maybe)
- httpbis pick what they want, (zero or more) and go
   do their stuff

- if there's still enough interest in some proposals
   that were not picked by httpbis we then try charter a sec
   area wg to develop experimental specs for those so
   they're off the critical path for httpbis (the rest die
   unloved;-)
- those experimental specs would be REQUIRED to work with
   http/1.1 and/or http/2.0 (as appropriate) with no change
   required to http; that'd be in the charter for that
   putative sec wg
- that sec wg charter might also say that the putative
   wg is not allowed to add new schemes until the
   originally chartered ones are completed (to avoid
   people turning up every week with their shiny new
   scheme)

Might that be a way forward that'll give enough folks
enough of what they want/need?

Cheers,
S.

Received on Friday, 24 February 2012 12:54:51 UTC