[NNTP] Working Group Closure

[Russ Allbery]

Scott Hollenbeck <sah at 428cobrajet.net> writes:

> One outdated milestone remains: "Oct 04 Provide list of new extensions
> that should be considered to the IESG for charter update consideration"

> Given that this milestone has been missed by almost a year and there
> doesn't appear to be any work going on to address it I am inclined to
> drop the milestone, consider the work of this group complete, and close
> the group.  Work to address new extensions can then by taken up if and
> when people are ready to consider forming a new working group.  The
> mailing list can remain open to address that topic and any issues that
> come up during the RFC editing process.

> That's my proposal.  Speak now if you feel the group should remain open.
> If you do feel that the group should remain open, you should also
> explain how you will help to complete the work and contribute to work
> going forward.

Hi Scott,

Here's my feelings on this, speaking just as an individual contributor and
not with a working group chair hat on.

The primary open issue on our previous work that hasn't been resolved to
the satisfaction of several people in the group is the limitation on
article numbers.  Several people do feel that the base draft should be
changed to allow for 64-bit article numbers (others don't).  It's
something that will need to be addressed eventually.  In a typical
implementation, it will probably be another 10 years before it's an issue;
in one unusual implementation, it will be an issue in another couple of
years.  I'm really not sure how to address this issue.

Other than that, while I think there is some work that could still be done
on documenting common extensions, I think the most useful thing by far
that the NNTP community could do at this point is implement the drafts we
just published.  Update existing software, try them out, make sure
everything works as expected in practice, and gather real-life experience
with the new standard.  That has to happen before we can look at advancing
any of these documents farther down the standards track.

That's what I personally plan on doing next, with INN, as soon as I can
find the time to do serious INN development again.  I think this is a good
time to take a bit of a break, try out the work that we've done, and
gather energy.  My inclination would be to reform a working group in a
year or so and start the work on advancing these standards to draft
standard status, as well as look at any additional extensions that need to
be worked on.

I'm happy to keep this mailing list open in the meantime for people to
talk about NNTP standardization and implementation experience informally.

When it comes time to reopen this working group, I hope to convince
Stanford to send me to IETF (which, for Stanford, would probably be in the
Kerberos, SASL, and related areas, but NNTP work can piggyback on that) so
that we can have in-person meetings as well.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>