ietf-nntp Thoughts on renaming X commands

[John Gardiner Myers]

The problem with XOVER et. al. shows that the practice of having
X-commands is fundamentally broken.  Segmenting the command namespace
into separate "non-standard" and "standard" areas prevents commands
from moving from "non-standard" to "standard" without the disruption
of a command rename.

The rationale for the separate "X" namespace practice is stated as
being to avoid conflicts between "non-standard" commands and future
"standard" commands.  The practise is both unnecessary and
insufficient to address this class of problem.  The working group is
sufficiently intelligent to not define a new standardized command that
conflicts with an identically named non-standard command in wide use.
The practice does not address the problem of two or more conflicting
"non-standard" commands with identical names.

The X-command practice is fundamentally flawed and should be abandoned.

The problem here is one of namespace collisions.  The effective way to
solve that type of problem is to establish a registry.  Require that
any NNTP command, standard or non-standard, be registered in an IANA
registry of NNTP command names.  Command names get handed out on a
first-come first-served basis.  This command name registry can be
subsumed by the server-capability registry.

The XOVER command is in widespread use.  Changing the name of the
command will cause disruption with no technical benefit.  The command
should be standardized with its current name.

-- 
_.John Gardiner Myers	Internet: jgm+ at CMU.EDU
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