WG Review: Internationalized Domain Name (idn)

Lisa Dusseault lisa at osafoundation.org
Fri Feb 29 18:48:53 CET 2008


Paul's suggested language (which we discussed even before he posted)  
puts the recharter requirement  even more bluntly.  That is, the WG  
direction must be confirmed by consensus, and if the WG goes off in a  
direction not discussed during WG formation, a recharter is  
required.  Sam does that resolve your issues as well  as the replaced  
sentence did?

Adding the phrase "not constrained in organization" is what addresses  
Paul's point about not holding the WG to a particular organization of  
documents in reaching the goals even if it does accept the goals and  
approach described in the charter and the design team documents.

Lisa

On Feb 28, 2008, at 4:54 PM, Paul Hoffman wrote:

> At 6:09 PM -0500 2/28/08, Sam Hartman wrote:
>> The charter says that the work is organized based on these drafts.
>> There is a consensus call to determine if the drafts can be accepted.
>> IF that fails, you don't have consensus to go forward with your  
>> chartered work so you are stuck with a recharter.
>
> I think I see the disconnect. It's a difference in viewing WG  
> formation without a BoF between different IESG members. This has  
> always been a contentious area.
>
> To be clear: I want the WG to form around the ideas from text in  
> the charter, but with flexibility on the structure and format for  
> the output documents. Given that, here is a replacement for the  
> last two bits of my original note:
>
>> The work is currently organized into four deliverables, all
>> Standards Track. The WG will verify that it has consensus
>> to adopt the proposed documents as a starting point. The
>> Overview document with explanation and rationale is intended
>> for Standards Track status because it has definitions and
>> other normative text required by the other documents. The
>> protocol specification explains how to map non-ASCII
>> characters into ASCII DNS labels. It relies normatively on
>> two other documents that are separate for readability: the
>> bidirectional algorithm specification and the character
>> validity tables. The validity of characters in IDNs is
>> almost exclusively based on Unicode properties but is
>> organized as tables and categories for readability.
>
> This paragraph sounds like the WG needs to keep the four documents  
> separated. The previous IDN WG got a fair amount or criticism for  
> our decision to split the protocol into four documents; this WG  
> shouldn't be bound to do the same unless it really wants to. A  
> proposed change would be to reword the first two sentences as follows:
>
> The work is currently organized (though not constrained in  
> organization) as four Standards Track documents. If the WG does not  
> come to early consensus around the general direction from this  
> charter, the WG will need to stop and recharter so that the IETF  
> can understand what the WG proposes to do.
>
> Then, delete the rest of the paragraph because it describes the  
> documents that have already been referenced.
>
> Given this change, I would amend my call for more reasonable  
> milestones to:
>
> Mar 08: WG formation
> Apr 08: WG agreement to the direction from the charter
> Apr 08: Decision on form and structure of the WG document set
> Aug 08: WG Last Call on WG document set
> Oct 08: IETF Last Call on WG document set
>
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --VPN Consortium
>



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