Re: proposed revised charter for IETF calsch WG

On Jul 30, 2004, at 7:08 PM, Doug Royer wrote:

> I do not think that RFC02445-7 have significant changes.

Alas, I disagree.  RFC 2026 spells out in detail the requirements for 
advancing a protocol to Draft Standard status, and the current RFCs 
don't even come close to fulfilling them.  A couple of relevant 
excerpts from Section 4.1.2:

    A specification from which at least two independent and interoperable
    implementations from different code bases have been developed, and
    for which sufficient successful operational experience has been
    obtained, may be elevated to the "Draft Standard" level.
     .........
    The requirement for at least two independent and interoperable
    implementations applies to all of the options and features of the
    specification.  In cases in which one or more options or features
    have not been demonstrated in at least two interoperable
    implementations, the specification may advance to the Draft Standard
    level only if those options or features are removed.

The just-concluded-today Interop of the Calendaring and Scheduling 
Consortium was interesting in many ways (as will be reported at the WG 
on Tuesday and to this list) but if there's one thing it showed very 
clearly, it was that there are multiple "options and features" that 
have not been demonstrated to interoperate, and possibly some that 
haven't yet been implemented once.

I hate to bear the gloomy message, but I think there is a lot of 
accumulated wisdom embedded in the IETF process.  We've got some 
serious work to do before iCal is worthy of Draft status, which 
(according to RFC 2026, same section) indicates "a strong belief that 
the specification is mature and will be useful."   As long as vendors 
are still writing new adapters to deal with each others' varying 
flavors of iCal, I find "mature and useful" to be a bit of a stretch.

The good news is that we can probably improve iCal greatly by 
simplifying it, rather than making it more complex.  More on that 
Tuesday, if not sooner.   I must sleep before yet another spam 
conference in the morning...  -- Nathaniel