Re: [Fwd: More information requested on publication status of draft-crocker-email-arch]

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On 5/26/09 at 10:42 PM +0100, Alexey Melnikov wrote:

'Internet Mail Architecture' <draft-crocker-email-arch> as a Proposed Standard

Please indicate your preference for publishing the document as:

   1. Proposed Standard, as queried in the two Last Call notices

I believe it should be Proposed Standard.

Also please indicate your reason(s) for this choice.

Restating something I sent to the IESG separately earlier:

This is an architecture document. We don't do these much anymore in the IETF, and this one is particularly strange because it is describing an architecture for a deployed service. However, I don't think that means we should shy away from it. We in the email community have needed this document for a *very* long time. We end up re-discussing architectural issues in each new WG just to get our terms straight and constrain solution spaces (cf. LEMONADE, MARID, DKIM). And we need to have a document to point to so that newcomers can couch their proposals in terms we understand without having to re-argue the model every time. But in order for it to work in these roles, and for it to have the ability to evolve over time, it really needs to be a standards track document.

Yes, there will inevitably be differences between the overall architecture of the system and the protocols that instantiate it. There are simply pragmatics which make such compromise required, and it is in fact a healthy tension. And yes, that fact means that some people will do stupid things, like claiming that where the architecture and protocols diverge, the architecture must win. There will always be such folks who don't understand that sometimes pragmatics prevail over architectural purity. But I think to not call this document what it is (i.e., an evolving community consensus on the email architecture) in fear of how it might be used is frankly a bit nuts. Let's address the problems as they arise rather than further diminishing the meaning of our document series.

pr
--
Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102
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