Re: Last Call: draft-ietf-webdav-rfc2518bis (HTTP Extensions for Distributed Authoring - WebDAV) to Proposed Standard

On Jan 19, 2007, at 1:03 PM, Julian Reschke wrote:

> Cullen,
>
> I was tempted to finish that mail with "and thanks for the fish",  
> in honor of Douglas Adams, but I resisted.

lol :-)

>
> Anyway, please understand that I don't want to make your or Ted's  
> life harder than it needs to be. I just feel that the document is  
> not good.

I know you are not trying to make anyones life hard and you are just  
trying to get this document to be right. I agree with you that the  
document has many problems and could be much better. I think that is  
important that you say it is not good if that is what you feel.  
However, I do think that it is better than rfc2518 and I am totally  
convinced given the last 18 months that this WG is not capable of  
making significant advances to this document. Perhaps I am just the  
wrong person and the folks in this WG are just too burned out  to  
drive more forward progress on this document. I hope someone does try  
to do something better than this draft, but given where we are today,  
I think we should publish this while waiting for the next thing.

> .
>
> I'd also *really* like to understand why it seems to me that some  
> voices on the mailing list are taken more seriously than others,  
> or, for that matter, why anonymous feedback during the IETF Last  
> Call obviously is more seriously considered than all the feedback  
> that *did* arrive on the mailing list.
>

The working group takes some people more seriously than others. For  
example, if you say "that will break several existing  
implementation," most people in the WG believe that much more than if  
I said it". That's good - you have much ore experience with the  
deployed system and it is typical for a WG to have some leaders that  
others look to for their advice and opinions. Ten seconds of looking  
at the archives will convince anyone that some people look to your  
opinion. I'm sure I can't count the number of "I agree with Julian"  
emails I have seen. However don't confuse that with what happens when  
trying to judge consensus - as a chair in trying to judge consensus,  
I do listen to everyone. The biggest problem in this WG is often so  
few people comment on anything that even if they all agree it's such  
a small fraction of the WG that it is hard to call it consensus.

> So, again, thanks for the Sushi that I really enjoyed. Hopefully  
> you'll consider my work on the IMPP-vcard draft as sort of payback.

I'm very thankful for the work you did on IMPP-vcard. It was  
something that I was never going to mange to finish. Likewise, don't  
take the lack of ability to come to agreement  on a much better  
version of 2518bis to be reflective of everything that is happening  
at IETF. This is basically the problem of a WG with so few people  
willing to even review comments and it's too small to really  
effectively function as a WG. You have a ton of expertise in XML,  
DAV, schema and lots of other things that IETF is doing active work  
in. Come to Prague and meet the people working on them and check out  
some of the more vibrant and less frustrating work the Wbdav.

>
> Best regards, Julian

Received on Saturday, 20 January 2007 20:05:15 UTC