Updated Charter

Based on feedback from Keith Moore, the Charter has been updated.  The
current version is now v0.7, March 18, 1997.  The Charter is now under
consideration by the IESG and the IAB, and expectations are that the
Charter will be approved before the Memphis IETF meeting, making WEBDAV an
IETF Working Group.

The Charter can be accessed at URL:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/charter.html

Major changes from previous versions of the Charter:

1. Addition of a pointer to the WEBDAV home page.
2. Changed the text to refer to the combined requirements document, rather
than the previous distributed authoring requirements and versioning
requirements documents.
3. Formatting changes to the "In-scope" list.
4. Removal of partial resource locking from the "In-scope" list.  Partial
resource locking is not in the "Not in scope" list either.  The intent is
to allow discussion of partial resource locking under the banner of
"locking" until the group comes to consensus on this topic.
5. Addition of a paragraph which states that WEBDAV is not intended to be a
distributed filesystem.

>Though the feature set described above bears a resemblance to the
>capabilities provided by a network file system, the intent of this
>working group is not to create a replacement distributed file system
>(e.g. NFS, CIFS). The WEBDAV emphasis on collaborative authoring of
>resources which are not necessarily stored in a file system, and which
>have associated metadata in the form of links and attributes,
>differentiate WEBDAV from a distributed file system.

6. Addition of a paragraph which states that the group will make sure the
final spec. does not preclude a future group from addressing disconnected
operation, potentially via email, but that this group will not be directly
addressing this topic.

>Eventually, it is desirable to provide access to WEBDAV capability by
>disconnected clients, or by clients whose only connectivity is via
>email. However, given the scope of developing requirements and
>specifications for disconnected operation, the initial target user group
>of fully connected clients, and the desire to work swiftly, the working
>group will address this issue by ensuring the protocol specification
>does not preclude a future body from developing an interoperability
>specification for disconnected operation via email.

7. A dramatic extension of the schedule, so that the deliverable date for
the final specification is now December 1997.  This is intended to allow
discussion at several IETF meetings before the specification is complete.


I apologise for not being able to have a more full discussion of the
modified Charter before submission to the IAB and IESG -- I did my best to
reflect the sentiment of the group when writing this Charter.  Certainly,
if the group disagrees with this Charter, it is possible in the future to
renegotiate it with the Area Directors and modify the scope.  However, we
certainly have a lot on our plate as it is...

- Jim

Received on Tuesday, 18 March 1997 17:20:24 UTC