Re: Dissemination of HTTP-NG info [was: hmmm]

At 23:23 3/11/98 -0700, Marc Slemko wrote:

Marc Slemko <marcs@znep.com>, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
www-talk@w3.org, jg@w3.org

>I don't think that the development of HTTP-NG is not being done in a
>reasonable way (note the double negative); I can't think that because I
>have nothing to base such a viewpoint on.  In the absence of more
>information, and knowing who is involved, I can only guess that it is more
>or less reasonable. 

I am very distressed about this. We have had extensive discussions on this
with several people from the the Apache group with cc to
<httpd-new@apache.org> on all my respones. However, I can't find them in
the archives from neither January, February, nor March 1998:

	http://dev.apache.org/mail/

so my only conclusion is that as I am not subscribed to the mailing list
then the mails have not gone through to the list.

Would it be possible for me to subscribe the Apache mailing list so that we
can avoid this confusion in the future?

It is very unfortunate and I believe a great waste of everybody's time - we
should have made much more progress in our common understanding by now, so
let me point out the main issues here again:

   - No, you do *not* have to pay 50K to follow the NG project.
   - No, you do *not* have to sign up for 50% of your time to follow either.
     We have a separate mailing list (interest group) for discusssions and
     comments on the rough working drafts that the Working Groups produce.
   - No, we do *not* intend to replace a new generation of HTTP without
     a large scale standadization process within IETF.

but on the other hand

   - Yes, we *do* want to remain focused on the task with small groups
   - Yes, we *do* want serious commitment from people directly participating
     in the design group as the web characterization group (hence the
     50% here).
   - Yes, we *do* need a trusted environment to discuss ideas and solutions

I have suggested that the interest group would be a great place to start by
signing up a few people from the Apache group if just someone would
actually step up to the plate.

The HTTP-NG Project *is* explained in quite a lot of details from the page

	http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP-NG/Activity.html

I can see in my mail archives that I have explicitly pointed this out on
several occasions, so again it seems that we have lost valuable time.
Again, the highlights are (with much more details in the page above):

- The current HTTP model has serious problems wrt. evolvability - it
doesn't provide a sufficient powerful platform for extending applications.

- It's also clear that the Web will (if not already have) will merge with
some sort of a distributed object system. Until now, the most serious
attempts have been to base it on top of HTTP using POST. While this is a
viable way to go, it is not likely that it will be the best way to ensure
the evolution of the Web.

- The question that we are trying to find an answer to is to see whether it
is possible to make a distributed object system that actually meets the
requirements of the Web and of the Internet at large with a real world,
scalable solution.

- In order to get a better grib of what the requirements are, we have a Web
characterization group that based on existing log data tries to find
patterns and distributions.

- On the design side, we are actually trying to *build* a testbed, making
*rough* implementations, and evolving a potential design based on *rough*
drafts. Our experience from HTTP/1.1 shows that this is the only way to
guarantee that a design works in the long run - we don't want to be in the
same situation again as was the case for HTTP/1.0.

If you have any further questions then you are more than welcome to contact
me.

Thanks,

Henrik
--
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen,
World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/People/Frystyk

Received on Thursday, 12 March 1998 10:53:30 UTC