Subject: Working group moving forward?

From: Joe Hildebrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 15:50:08 -0700

I split this out into a separate thread so it's easier to find.

My take on what I've seen in the last several months of the WebDAV working
group is that if there was to be a BOF session today, I don't see any way
that a working group would get approved.  A couple of people would have
shown up to the meeting, no one except the person asking for the BOF would
have agreed to edit drafts, and there might only be weak hums for "is this
interesting" and "is this a good technical approach".

As far as where we are now, some of the current drafts might make much
better progress as individual submissions.  Keep in mind that in the current
process the WG chair has to shepard WG drafts through.  As much as editors
may not like this, it means that you have to get at least one WG chair fired
up enough about your draft to take on this responsibility.   That is a sales
job, not a technical job.  However, as individual submissions, all of the
process is up to the AD.  The downside for editors is that ADs are pretty
busy, and you have to sell your work to them.  Also, there's no way to force
consensus on an AD, since they can just say "no".  

My guess for BIND is that either Ted or Scott would want clarification on a
couple of the interoperability questions that Lisa has raised, regardless of
whether the answer can be inferred by a fully-informed reader.  This means
that moving to the individual process might or might not streamline the
process, depending upon how willing you were to make changes that they asked
for.

Frankly, I don't think the working group process is adding much in the way
of value for the drafts we are working on, compared with other WGs I've
participated in.  As such, it may be needless bureaucracy, and we ought to
think about decommissioning it.

-- 
Joe Hildebrand 

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---

From: "Jim Whitehead" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 15:54:20 -0800

Joe,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the WebDAV WG, and its future
direction. Thank you as well for your contributions to this working group as
its Co-Chair. I know well that this is a time consuming and often thankless
task.

But (and you knew a "but" was coming :-) I do disagree with you on several
points.

> My take on what I've seen in the last several months of the 
> WebDAV working group is that if there was to be a BOF session 
> today, I don't see any way that a working group would get 
> approved.

Irrelevant. In 1996 there was a clear and present need for an interoperable
web authoring standard. At that time, the WebDAV BOF had a standing room
crowd. Of course there would be fewer people today, just as it would be hard
to have a broadly attended FTP BOF, or Telnet BOF. We're not in that phase
of development. We're in completion mode, not ramp up mode. It's never
exciting to dot the final "i" and cross the final "t".

> As far as where we are now, some of the current drafts might 
> make much better progress as individual submissions.

This is very unclear. The progress of individual submissions in the RFC
editor's queue, once they have received IESG approval, is glacial. They
never turn into RFCs. Working group documents fare much better in terms of
responsiveness.

> Keep in mind that in the current process the WG chair has to shepard 
> WG drafts through.  As much as editors may not like this, it 
> means that you have to get at least one WG chair fired
> up enough about your draft to take on this responsibility. 

A Chair assumes certain duties when they take on the position of Chair. 

I do not see any process RFC that states that document authors are required
to generate enthusiasm in their Chairs.

> My guess for BIND is that either Ted or Scott would want 
> clarification on a couple of the interoperability questions 
> that Lisa has raised, regardless of whether the answer can be 
> inferred by a fully-informed reader.

I agree, and applaud that you, as Chair, are helping to focus the discussion
of the working group on productive, tangible work items.

> Frankly, I don't think the working group process is adding 
> much in the way of value for the drafts we are working on, 
> compared with other WGs I've participated in.  As such, it 
> may be needless bureaucracy, and we ought to think about 
> decommissioning it.

I disagree. This working group has had a good track record over the past few
years of shipping specifications to RFC status (3648 in 12/2003, 3744 in
5/2004). These specifications have had multiple implementations, and are in
shipping code that meet thousand's of people's needs on a daily basis.

The issues raised in the recent last calls have been subtle, and resolving
them has significantly enhanced the quality and value of the final
specifications. IMO, this is evidence of a working group doing what it's
supposed to do: providing careful, informed review, and producing top
quality specifications.

I think the WebDAV Working Group can very usefully serve two more purposes,
neither of which needs to take much time.

1) Complete BIND.
2) Complete Quota.

Both are very close to completion. Once these two are done, then it seems
reasonable to disband WebDAV WG. Given how close these two documents are to
being done, it would be a waste of all of the effort that has gone into them
to date to stop their development as WG items now.

- Jim

---

From: "Jim Whitehead" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 15:58:50 -0800

> inferred by a fully-informed reader. 

Julian Reschke and I just chatted on the phone. My perception is that we
both agree that it makes sense to discuss the semantics of all DAV
properties under BIND, UNBIND, and REBIND. There seem to be differences in
desired behavior between properties whose semantics originated in WeBDAV
(which are typically defined on the resource), and ones inherited from HTTP
(like getlastmodified) which depend on representations of the resource. It
is likely this discussion will lead to modifications to the bind
specification.

Julian said he'd take the first whack at summarizing the technical points.

- Jim

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 11:34:05 +0100

Jim Whitehead wrote:
> ...

But, on the other hand, it's necessary. The Subversion guys just spent a 
lot of energy trying to design (and partly implement) support for a 
specific locking feature (lock null resources) that this WG has 
deprecated several years ago; yet all the (well, some) implementors see 
is RFC2518.

> never turn into RFCs. Working group documents fare much better in terms of

Data point: I submitted 
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-reschke-webdav-property-datatypes-08.html> 
to the RFC Editor on Sept, 27, 2004 (almost 6 months ago). It's now at 
position 19 out of 36 entries in the state "INDEPENDENT SUBMISSIONS 
UNDER RFC EDITOR REVIEW", of which the oldest ones are from 2002). Note 
that this is just a waiting queue, not really a publication queue -- 
once it get's through this queue, it will be sent back to the 
Applications Area Director (right now Ted Hardie).

> to generate enthusiasm in their Chairs.

In particular, I'd argue that a draft being on the WG's charter SHOULD 
generate enough enthusiasm to help it getting through the process... 
Alternatively, the chairs should update the charter.

 > ...

In which case we should also discuss what's the best way to make 
progress on RFC2518bis outside a WG.

Best regards, Julian

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