ietf-nntp Draft 20 pre-release 2

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Ken Murchison said:
> Sorry about that.  I pointed Rob and Mark Crispin at section 11.6 to see 
> if they were comfortable with it (since I know that they don't frequent 
> the list), and neither were.  Rob decided to respond immediately, and 
> Mark is waiting for IESG review.

I hope Mark will take part in the discussion now rather than waiting. I
hope he doesn't see this as something that we've decided and he needs to
get overridden; rather, it should be text that we're all happy with before
it goes to review.

>> In the interest of expediency, I'm willing to go along with just outlawing
>> all caching of the results of LIST EXTENSIONS.  I really want to get this
>> document out the door.  I think we'll catch grief about it from news
>> authors during last call, but it may be less grief than we catch from IESG
>> review, and whatever gets the document done faster is better as far as I'm
>> concerned.
> 
> Your call as you're the WG chair.  I'm sure that you're aware that this 
> will most likely come up again during the IESG review, especially if 
> more of the "evil mail folks" get involved.  ;)

My belief is that the general consensus was:

* Some people want caching of common capabilities while others see it as a
waste of time. Therefore a client MAY cache.

* Servers make absolutely no guarantees. Therefore you MUST NOT rely on the
cached information; you can only use it to drive heuristics.

* Security is a whole different kettle of fish. It's a really really bad
idea to cache knowledge about security capabilities rather than checking
each time. This is, at least, a SHOULD NOT matter if not a MUST NOT matter
(see previous email).

Does anyone actually disagree with any of the above three points?

I've tried to capture them in new wording which I'll send out in a
separate email. I hope everyone, including you, Rob, Mark, and Russ, will
be happy with it but, if not, please let's sort it out now.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
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