WG Review: Internationalized Domain Name (idn)

[Paul Hoffman]

At 4:22 PM -0500 2/28/08, Sam Hartman wrote:
>  >>>>> "Paul" == Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman at vpnc.org> writes:
>
>
>     Paul> The WG will start by finding consensus on the type of
>     Paul> document or documents it wants as its output, most likely
>     Paul> using the current work described above as a basis.
>
>Paul, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I have a bit of a
>problem with your rewording.  The current charter is intended to start
>off with a gating consensus call.  The WG either decides to base its
>work on the existing documents or it needs to come back to the entire
>community with a recharter explaining what it is going to do.

Boy, I didn't read it that way. I see nothing in the charter that 
calls for such a gating decision, and the first milestone is:

>Mar 08: WG Last Call for Overview/Rationale document

If you want some gating, you need to do it before that.

>What you propose writes a rather large blank check to the WG.

That was not my intention.

>I agree
>the WG should be given freedom to organize its documents as it likes.
>I don't think the WG should be given the freedom to go off in an
>initial direction we've never heard of without a community wide sanity
>check.

Fully agree. I don't think what I wrote above gives the WG that, 
given the rest of the charter. The charter already narrowly scopes 
the possible direction:

>This WG is chartered to untie IDNA from specific versions of Unicode 
>using algorithms that define validity based on Unicode properties.

Mind you, I don't agree that this is the best direction for the IETF, 
but I'm in the small minority in my thinking, so I am going along 
with the rest of the group. But I don't see how, given that very 
definitive statement earlier in the charter, that the WG can go off 
in an initial direction very far from where the current documents go.

>Any chance we could work on wording that gives organizational 
>flexibility without being as broad as you propose?

You could extend it to:

The WG will start by finding consensus on the type of document or 
documents it wants as its output, most likely using the current work 
described above as a basis, as long as the direction of the document 
set adheres to the rest of this charter.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium