Required changes to draft-ietf-idwg-idmef-xml-14

Hi.  I apologize for the long time it has taken me to review the idmef
draft.

One problem with the IESG job is that if something has been delayed
for a long time, you get into the trap of assuming that additional
delay won't hurt much more and so you focus on things that are not yet
behind.  Clearly this is not the correct strategy but it seems to be
the trap I've fallen into here.


I have also been slow because I needed to seek significant input from
the rest of the IESG.


When e last talked, I was going to go off and review the document.  I
said that if no significant changes were needed I'd take it to the
IESG and not think too hard about whether there is still an active
working group here.  

Unfortunately, I believe there are changes required.  So I have
evaluated the question of whether there has been enough active
participation in the last versions of the document and in the first
part of this year to consider IDWG an active working group.  Based on
my own conclusions and on the strong opinions of other area directors
I've consulted with, IDWG no longer constitutes an active working
group.  There is an insufficient core of active
participants--particularly participants not involved in the
document--to generate an informed consensus on changes.

However it is desirable to publish IDMEF in at least some form.  The
IESG said it would be willing to support publication of IDMEF as an
experimental RFC provided that some consistency problems are fixed.
The existing protocol document would be reclassified as an
experimental RFC.

So, what changes are required?

The only critical change is that while the schema is normative, all
the document is written in terms of the DTD not the schema.  As an
example, IDMEF messages are required to include DTD declarations, and
all of the class semantics are written in terms of the schema.

For this reason, I do not believe the schema can be normative.  Also,
based on discussing this transition with others, I have very low
confidence that the schema and DTD will be consistent.  

So I request that the schema be removed and the DTD become normative
again.


We can discuss alternatives, but you will need to convince me that the
resulting document is self consistent and that you have the necessary
resources to make that evaluation.

If we have not made significant progress by the end of IETF 65 (end of
March), then I will close the WG and mark the documents as dead.