Larry Masinter (masinter@parc.xerox.com)
Fri, 13 Aug 1999 14:26:19 PDT
Re: Aug 1999 WG approval of VPIM v3 Goals as Informational RFC
I think that the VPIM V3 'goals' document is incomplete and will
require a little work before it is ready to release as an
informational document; I don't think that the proposed
schedule for its release is reasonable.
A few examples:
I don't think the interoperability goals give sufficient guidance
for prioritization of conflicting interoperability scenarios.
VPIM v3 "require {1} support for the new media-agnostic systems"
without giving any clue or reference to where one could find out
the characteristics of such systems.
Section 2.2 "Conformance to existing standards" doesn't identify,
designate, list, prioritize, or otherwise describe which existing
standards it's important to have conformance [sic] to.
"Restrictions: The profile should {2} impose as few restrictions as
possible to existing Internet mail standards." but what does it
mean to have a 'restriction'?
The document is, in minor ways, self-contradictory.
In section 2, it says "the profile must {1} enable interoperability
between voice mail systems, unified messaging systems, Internet
email servers, and desktop client applications."
but later, in section 3, it says
"It is essential {1} that VPIM version 3 support
interoperability between most of the systems listed below, and
desirable {3} to support all of them:"
without being clear as to what is meant by 'most', e.g.,
is it OK to leave out 'traditional email servers' or just
some traditional email servers.
It's easy to see that the group who have developed this document
in EMA understand what they mean and want to get on with it,
but I don't think the document captures that understanding.
The body of draft-ema-vpimv3-goals-00.txt is about 1/4 of the size
of the equivalent in RFC 2542 (Terminology and Goals for Internet Fax),
and yet it covers Internet Fax as well as Voice mail, and thus
would likely have the same issues to cover. What are the security
goals for VPIM v3? What are the goals or requirements for message
confirmation? Is there any interoperability considerations for
short message service (SMS) and/or instant messaging? For
message-waiting notification?
It borrows the same terminology from RFC 2542, of using {1}, {2},
and {3} priorities, but those priorities were arrived at in the
Internet Fax working group only after two years of discussion in
the working group. They're defined as consisting of {1} 'general
agreement', {2} 'most believe', {3} 'general belief', but without
a discussion of these issues in the open mailing list of the working
group, it's hard to believe that the author could accurately
reflect the general belief of the group.
My best guess is that actually getting consensus on
draft-ema-vpimv3-goals will require at least 3-4 revisions
and will last at least four months, and then only if people actually
read it and discuss it, and that the schedule should reflect this.
There's no point in issuing something that you don't believe in.
Larry
-- http://www.parc.xerox.com/masinter
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