Hi all,
Since this Extensions draft would be a useful contribution for
clarifying the RDAP extensibility, and that there are other drafts
waiting on it for a more definitive naming guidance, would it be more
productive if we held an interim meeting before the next IETF to
focus on ironing out any disagreements, especially the one about bare
identifiers?
Jim/Antoin/Orie, please advise on this matter.
Thanks,
Jasdip
From: Pawel Kowalik <[email protected]>
Date: Tuesday, April 1, 2025 at 12:11 PM
To: Andrew Newton (andy) <[email protected]>, [email protected]
<[email protected]>
Subject: [regext] Re: simplifying the extensions rules
Hi Andy,
On 31.03.25 16:50, Andrew Newton (andy) wrote:
Hi all,
At IETF 122, Pawel brought up the lack of time to discuss the
simplification of the extension rules as outlined in the email
below.
From what I can tell, the working group agrees with the
simplification
of rules on writing RDAP extensions, with the exception of Pawel. In
fairness to him, this warrants a bit more discussion as his
position,
as I understand it, is not a simple "I disagree."
As I understand it (and Pawel please correct me), his position is
that
violation of the rules should be NOT RECOMMENDED whereas our
statement
below implies MUST NOT.
[PK] Well, I don't like framing of my position with a lot of
rhetoric.
"violation of the rules" sounds so obvious that it should be
forbidden,
that it frames directly any disagreement into a difficult position to
argument for it.
In fact "the rules" set in 2.1 of RFC9083 are no rules, but a
recommendation (SHOULD) itself. So I argument actually to keep the
status quo of RFC9083 as opposed to defining new rules as now the
change
of -05 proposes.
Also in the original E-mail you mentioned "complex set of rules" that
hinder interoperability without actually any evidence which these are
or
would be. I went though all changes in -05 and I didn't find any
point
where the rules got simplified in any way.
Finally I argument that the provisions of STD 95 are absolutely
sufficient to maintain interoperability. By including the changes of
-05, even though the document ought to guide extension authors not
the
implementations, it might either misguide the implementations which
would implement stricter rules and not be able to handle extension
from
before extension draft publication as RFC - so the interoperability
would suffer in the end.
IMO, things like NOT RECOMMENDED and SHOULD/SHOULD NOT are nearly
worthless unless they can be qualified. That is, unless we can
describe the conditions for going against a recommendation then
there
is no clear need to allow doing so. And that isn't just my opinion:
the IESG routinely puts DISCUSSes on docs for this.
[PK] That is correct and likely right to do so. Worth mentioning that
the -05 document uses "RECOMMENDED" in 9 places and "SHOULD" in 39 so
I
really don't take it as a valid criteria to decide whether to change
RFC9083 / STD 95 or not.
I probably lack imagination, but I do not see the reason to allow an
extension author to violate the rules. But that is me. The purpose
of
this message is to gather other opinions.
[PK] As mentioned above, "the rules" are recommendations, so there is
no
violation taking place.
Kind Regards,
Pawel
