ietf-nntp Revised Notes from IETF 49

[Lee Kindness]

Stan O. Barber writes:
 > Lee Kindness said:
 > > You fail to understand that the addition of the 'UTC' token is
 > > totally pointless!
 > No, I agree it is totally pointless. I have always thought
 > that. Unfortunatley, there were others who were very vocal in
 > arguing about this and there seemed to be no way for those folks to
 > understand how pointless this addition would be. This was done as a
 > compromise. Compromises often result in poor design. That's a fact
 > of life.
 > Now, if those who were so vocal will vocally admit that their
 > original position was wrong and support no change from RFC977 with
 > respect to this, I will remove it. Otherwise, it stays.

Many people are vocal without giving a matter thought. Rather than put 
the onus on them changing their mind you should prod them towards
giving a well thought out reason for adding the 'UTC' token. I have
put forward an argument that, in my opinion, proves that 'UTC' is not
needed - if they cannot do similar then 'UTC' should be dropped.

Remember my position should be the one that is the default - they
should agrue towards a change from RFC-977. Quoting the WG charter:

 > The IETF NNTP extensions Working Group shall: 
 > 1. Revise and publish a standards-track successor to RFC 977 that
 > removes ambiguities from the original document, defines a mechanism
 > for adding extensions to the protocol, and provides a mechanism for 
 > the server to inform the client of the extensions which it
 > supports.

UTC/GMT is not an ambiguity in RFC-977.

 > 2. Include in the same document some reasonable group of existing
 > commonly used extensions forming a new base functionality for NNTP.

The 'UTC' token is not a commonly used extension.

 [ snip ]

 > The first concern of this working group shall be for the
 > interoperability of the various NNTP implementations, and herefore
 > for clear and explicit specification of the protocol. It is very
 > important that we document the existing situation before taking up
 > any new work. 

I believe that I have argued this point already in my mail of
25/01/2001.

-- 
 Lee Kindness                  lkindness at csl.co.uk
 Software Engineer             Concept Systems Ltd.