Re: [ga] Re: New Versions of IDNA Protocol Revision Proposals Posted

[Thomas Narten <narten@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 02:26:16PM +0100,
>  GNSO.SECRETARIAT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote 
>  a message of 61 lines which said:

> > An informal expert panel, working as what the IETF calls a "design
> > team,"

IMO, the text here is a bit awkwardly worded because it is talking
about an IETF nuance that people not familiar with the IETF wouldn't
appreciate (or probably even care about).

The fact is that the IETF has not chartered a WG to do the IDNAbis
work. Thus, "officially" or "formally", the IETF isn't doing any work
here. But that is an extremely narrow, legalistic reading of reality.

In fact, it is widely understood that IDNAbis is needed. There are
real problems with the existing RFCs that MUST be fixed. (See RFC
4690.)  But rather than charter a formal WG, the IETF leadership opted
to let the work be done via a more informal "design team" (this is not
all that unusual of a step). That work has been done openly. There are
public mailing lists, there have been face-to-face meetings at the
IETF, etc. At some point (hopefully within the next month or two) the
team will declare itself "done". At that point, the documents will
formally go through the IETF as an "Independent Submission" with the
aim have of having the document set become Standards Track
protocols. They will go through the normal IETF Last Call, followed by
an IESG evaluation, and assuming that any issues that arise are worked
out satisfactorily, the documents will be approved by the IESG and get
published as RFCs. This is normal IETF process, no magic here.

> Be aware that it is *not* IETF work, it is just that: three persons
> informally gathering to propose things, that's all. It has no official
> status, the IDNA standard is still RFC 3490, as before. And there is
> no consensus on the proposed changes.

Your last sentence suggests that there is "no consensus" for the
changes, i.e., that they are unlikely to become adopted. I hope that
is not what you are saying, because IDNAbis is needed, and if the work
done so far isn't adopted, we have a HUGE problem because we won't
have fixed the known problems with IDNA. (Again, see RFC 4690.)

That said, technically, there is "no consensus" for the
changes. Technically, there is no way to formally measure the degree
of consensus until the IETF Last Call begins. But there is a HUGE
assumption that that IDNAbis will become a Proposed Standard.
Certainly, all the folk that have been working on it for a year or so
wouldn't be wasting their time if they thought the effort wasn't going
to produce an replacement for RFC 3490.

Thomas