💾 Archived View for gemini.bortzmeyer.org › rfc-mirror › rfc4228.txt captured on 2024-07-09 at 01:24:34.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Network Working Group A. Rousskov
Request for Comments: 4228 The Measurement Factory
Category: Informational December 2005
Requirements for an IETF Draft Submission Toolset
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
Abstract
This document specifies requirements for an IETF toolset to
facilitate Internet-Draft submission, validation, and posting.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. Scope ...........................................................2
3. Notation and Terminology ........................................3
4. Status Quo ......................................................4
5. Overall Toolset Operation .......................................6
6. Upload Page .....................................................9
7. Check Action ....................................................9
7.1. Preprocessing .............................................10
7.2. Processing ................................................11
7.3. Storage ...................................................11
7.4. Extraction ................................................12
7.5. Validation ................................................13
7.5.1. Absolute Requirements ..............................14
7.5.2. Desirable Features .................................15
7.5.3. DoS Thresholds .....................................17
7.5.4. WG Approval ........................................17
8. Check Page .....................................................18
8.1. External Meta-Data ........................................19
9. Post Now Action ................................................20
9.1. Receipt Page ..............................................20
10. Adjust Action .................................................21
11. Adjust Page ...................................................21
12. Post Manually Action ..........................................22
13. Receipt Page ..................................................22
Rousskov Informational [Page 1]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
14. Bypassing the Toolset .........................................22
15. Email Interface ...............................................23
16. Implementation Stages .........................................25
17. Testing .......................................................26
18. Security Considerations .......................................27
19. Compliance ....................................................27
Appendix A. Comparison with Current Procedures ....................28
Appendix B. Acknowledgements ......................................29
Normative References ..............................................30
Informative References ............................................30
1. Introduction
Public Internet-Drafts are the primary means of structured
communication within the IETF. Current Internet-Draft submission and
posting mechanisms hinder efficient and timely communication while
creating an unnecessary load on the IETF Secretariat. The IETF Tools
team recommends formalization and automation of the current
mechanisms. This document contains specific automation requirements.
The IETF Secretariat and many IETF participants have long been
proponents of automation. This document attempts to reflect their
known needs and wishes, as interpreted by the Tools team.
2. Scope
The Draft Submission Toolset discussed in this document is about
getting a single new version of an Internet-Draft from an IETF
participant to the IETF draft repository. A single draft version may
include several formats, and dealing with those formats is in scope
for the Toolset. Definition and sources of draft meta-information
(to be used in Secretariat databases and elsewhere) are in scope.
Submitter authentication and submission authorization are in scope.
Draft posting may result in various notifications sent to interested
parties. While this document recommends a subset of notification
targets, details of notifications are out of scope.
Creation of new drafts or new draft versions as well as manipulation,
visualization, and interaction with the drafts already in the
repository are out of scope. Draft expiration and archiving of old
draft versions are out of scope.
The set of requirements in this document is not meant to be
comprehensive or final. Other IETF documents or procedures may
require additional functionality from the Toolset. For example, it
is possible that the Toolset will be required to handle draft source
formats other than plain text and XML.
Rousskov Informational [Page 2]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
3. Notation and Terminology
The following terms are to be interpreted according to their
definitions below.
posted draft: A draft accepted into the public IETF draft repository
and, hence, publicly available from the IETF web site. Posting of
a draft does not imply any IETF or IESG review and endorsement.
draft version: A meant-to-be-public snapshot of an Internet-Draft
with a meant-to-be-unique version number. Also known as "draft
revision".
draft format: Any draft source or presentation format, including
original and preprocessed XML, original or generated plain text as
well as PDF, PostScript, and HTML formats.
primary draft format: The first available draft format from the
following list: plain text, PDF, PostScript, or XML.
WG-named draft: A draft for which identifier (a.k.a. filename) is
known and starts with "draft-SPECIAL-", where SPECIAL is one of
the following strings: "ietf", "iab", "iesg", "rfc-editor", or
"irtf". Abbreviated as "WGN draft". Exceptions notwithstanding,
WG-named drafts are usually controlled by IETF working groups or
similar IETF-related bodies (and vice versa). The handling of
such naming exceptions is outside of this document's scope.
individual draft: A draft other than a WGN draft.
submitter: A human or software agent initiating submission of an
Internet-Draft version for validation or posting. In some cases,
the Secretariat staff does the actual submission, but always on
behalf of a submitter. In some cases (including but not limited
to malicious attacks), the submitter is not the draft author.
expected submitter: A submitter that is authorized by IETF rules to
post a given draft. This includes a draft author or editor
(listed in the draft text), a corresponding WG Chair, or an IESG
member.
authorized submitter: An expected submitter authenticated by the
Toolset. Authentication is initially limited to verifying
submitter access to submitter's email address.
immediately: Without human interaction or artificial software delays
and within a few seconds.
Rousskov Informational [Page 3]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
The Toolset is specified using a set of normative requirements.
These requirements are English phrases ending with an "(Rnnn/s)"
indication, where "nnn" is a unique requirement number, and "s" is a
single-letter code ("a", "b", or "c") specifying the implementation
stage for the requirement. Implementation stages are documented in
Section 16.
This document specifies the interface and functionality of the
Toolset, not the details of a Toolset implementation. However,
implementation hints or examples are often useful. To avoid mixup
with Toolset requirements, such hints and examples are often marked
with a "Hint:" prefix. Implementation hints do not carry any
normative force, and a different implementation may be the best
choice.
4. Status Quo
This section summarizes the process for draft submission and posting
as it exists at the time of writing.
To get an Internet-Draft posted on the IETF web site, an IETF
participant emails the draft text to the IETF Secretariat, along with
an informal note asking the Secretariat to post the draft.
Secretariat staff reads the note, reviews the draft according to a
checklist, and then approves or rejects the submission. Draft
approval triggers the corresponding announcement to be sent to
appropriate IETF mailing lists. Every 4 hours, approved drafts are
automatically copied to the IETF drafts repository and become
available on the IETF web site.
Collectively, IETF participants submit thousands of Internet-Drafts
per year (in the year 2000, about 3,000 drafts were submitted; 2002:
5k; 2004: 7k [secretariat]). About 30-50% of posted drafts are
WG-named drafts (among some 2,100 drafts, there were about 380 new
and 290 updated WGN drafts posted in 2003). While no rejection
statistics are available, the vast majority of submitted drafts are
approved by the Secretariat for posting.
It usually takes the Secretariat a few minutes to review a given
draft. However, since the Secretariat staff does not work 24/7, does
not work in all time zones, and has other responsibilities, and since
approved drafts are posted in batches every 4 hours, it may take from
several hours to several days to get a draft posted. Due to much
higher demand and fixed processing capacity, postings during the last
weeks before IETF face-to-face meetings take much longer, creating a
long queue of unprocessed drafts that are then announced nearly
simultaneously.
Rousskov Informational [Page 4]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
To give IETF face-to-face meeting participants time to review
relevant documents, the Secretariat does not accept Internet-Draft
submissions close to IETF meetings (regardless of whether a draft is
relevant to the upcoming meeting or not).
Many Working Groups have come up with ad hoc solutions to cope with
posting delays. For example, many draft snapshots are "temporarily"
published on personal web sites or sent (completely or in part) to
the group list. Alternative means of publication may effectively
replace official IETF interfaces, with only a few major draft
revisions ending up posted on the IETF web site.
Informal interfaces for submitting and posting drafts discourage
automation. Lack of submission automation increases Secretariat
load, complicates automated indexing and cross-referencing of the
drafts, and, for some authors, leads to stale drafts not being
updated often enough.
Beyond a short Secretariat checklist, submitted drafts are not
checked for compliance with IETF requirements for archival documents,
and submitters are not notified of any violations. As a result, the
IESG and RFC Editor may have to spend resources (and delay approval)
resolving violations with draft authors. Often, these violations can
be detected automatically and would have been fixed by draft authors
if the authors knew about them before requesting publication of the
draft.
Technically, anybody and anything can submit a draft to the
Secretariat. There is no reliable authentication mechanism in place.
Initial submissions of WGN drafts require WG Chair approval, which
can be faked just like the submission request itself. No malicious
impersonations or fake approvals have been reported to date, however.
Lack of authentication is not perceived as a serious problem,
possibly because serious falsification are likely to be noticed
before serious damage can be done. Due to the informal and manual
nature of the submission mechanism, its massive automated abuse is
unlikely to cause anything but a short denial of draft posting
service and, hence, is probably not worth defending against.
However, future automation may result in a different trade-off.
Rousskov Informational [Page 5]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
5. Overall Toolset Operation
This section provides a high-level description for the proposed
Toolset. The description is meant to show overall operation and
order; please refer to other sections for details specific to each
step.
A typical submitter goes through a sequence of 2-4 web pages and
associated actions. The number of pages depends on the draft
validation and meta-data extraction results. For example, validating
the draft without posting it requires interacting with two web pages:
Upload and Check. The common case of posting a valid draft without
manual meta-data adjustments takes three web pages (Upload, Check,
Receipt).
Here is a brief overview of pages and actions:
Upload page: The interface to copy a draft from the submitter's
computer to the Toolset staging area (Section 6). Multiple
formats are accepted. The draft is sent to the Check action.
Check action: Stores the draft in the Toolset staging area, extracts
draft meta-data, validates the submission (Section 7). Produces
the Check page.
Check page: Displays draft interpretation and validation results
(Section 8). A draft preview may also be given on this page.
After reviewing the draft interpretation and validation results,
the submitter has four basic choices: (a) auto-post draft "as is"
now; (b) make manual corrections and submit the draft to
Secretariat for manual posting later; (c) cancel submission; or
(d) do nothing. The automated posting option may not be available
for drafts with validation errors.
Automated posting: If the submitter decides to proceed with automated
posting from the Check page, the system authenticates the
submitter and may also check whether the submitter is allowed to
post the draft. If the submitter is authorized, the draft is
immediately posted, deleted from the staging area, and the
submitter is notified of the result via email and a Receipt page
(Section 9).
Manual adjustment and posting: If the submitter decides to adjust the
meta-data, the draft remains in the Toolset staging area, and the
Adjust action (Section 10) presents the submitter with an Adjust
page (Section 11). When the submitter makes the adjustments and
proceeds with manual posting, a pointer to the stored draft and
its adjusted meta-data is sent to the Secretariat for manual
Rousskov Informational [Page 6]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
processing (Section 12). The submitter is notified of the pending
Secretariat request via email and a Receipt page.
Cancellation: If the submitter decides to explicitly cancel the
submission, the submission state (including the draft) is
immediately deleted from the Toolset staging area and an
appropriate Receipt page is generated without further actions
(R123/a). Cancellation of posted drafts is out of this document
scope.
Receipt page: Contains details of a successful or failed draft
submission and informs the submitter of the next appropriate
step(s) related to submission result.
The following informal diagram illustrates the basic submission
logic:
/---> Post Now
/
Upload --> Check -+-----> Adjust ---> Send to Secretariat
\
\---> Cancel
If the submitter does nothing while the Toolset is expecting some
response, the abandoned submission times out (R124/a). The timeout
value depends on the submission state. Hint: A timeout value of one
hour is probably large enough unless the Toolset is waiting for some
kind of a 3rd party confirmation (e.g., WG Chair approval). Doing
nothing is functionally equivalent to explicitly canceling the
submission, except that explicit cancellation requires immediate
removal of submission state while the state of submissions marked as
abandoned is garbage-collected.
The staging area maintenance algorithms must keep the area in a
consistent, correct state in the presence of denial-of-service (DoS)
attacks attempting to overwhelm the area with fake submissions in
various stages (R67/a). Hint: denial of service to legitimate users
is acceptable under DoS attack conditions, but corruption of the
storage area is not.
The "web pages" this text is referring to are distinct dialogs that
may be visible to the submitter under the same or different URL and
that are supported by a single or several server-side programs.
The Toolset must handle multiple submitters simultaneously submitting
the same draft (R72/a) and a single submitter simultaneously
submitting two drafts (R73/a). The latter might happen, for example,
when the submitter is using several browser windows to submit several
Rousskov Informational [Page 7]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
drafts or is submitting drafts via email interface. The term
"simultaneously" means that submission processing times overlap.
Hint: Except for the Upload page, pages contain a submission session
identifier to provide actions with access to stored information. The
identifier is specific to the submission rather than the draft
version or the submitter. While the nature of the web interface
allows the session identifier to be invisible to the submitter, email
communication would need to identify the session so that the
recipient (and Toolset) know the context.
Hint: A single action may correspond to multiple server-side programs
and, vice versa, a single program may implement several actions.
This document does not mandate any specific technology (e.g., Common
Gateway Interface (CGI), PHP, and/or Java servlets) to implement
server-side support. The implementer experience, code reuse across
web and email interfaces, and other factors will determine the right
technology choice.
Hint: Actions preserve and exchange state by storing it along with
the draft. Grouping all submission-specific information in one
subdirectory named using the session identifier may increase
robustness and simplify debugging. Session creation and destruction
can then be logged in a global index.
Ways to partially or completely bypass the Toolset are documented in
Section 14.
It must be possible to transfer the Toolset from one management team
to another, to incorporate work by volunteers, and to allow for
public review of the developed code. To meet these goals, the
Toolset source codes should be publicly available (R152/b) and there
should be an interface to report bugs and request enhancements
(R145/b). Development should be structured to avoid lock-in to
proprietary platforms or backends. The Tools team believes that
developing the Toolset sources under one or more open source licenses
following the Open Source Definition [OSD] would provide an effective
way of meeting these requirements at reasonable cost. Care should be
taken that the licenses selected allow code from different
implementers to be mixed.
Hint: Placing the Toolset source repository at an
open-source-friendly project management site like SourceForge.net
would provide the IETF community with a decent, ready-to-use
interface to access the code, documentation, bug reports, and
discussion forums. Establishing and documenting a simple interface
between the Toolset and external software (e.g., the Secretariat
draft posting scripts) would facilitate availability checks.
Rousskov Informational [Page 8]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
The Toolset is meant to be compatible with the Secretariat's tools
for handling drafts. Hint: Such compatibility can be achieved by
appropriately implementing the Toolset or, in some cases, by
modifying existing Secretariat tools.
6. Upload Page
To upload a draft, the submitter goes to a well-known page on the
IETF web site (R1/b). There, the draft text can be uploaded using an
HTML file upload form. This form provides fields to upload the plain
text format of the draft (R2/a) and all other formats allowed by IETF
draft publication rules (R3/b). At the time of writing, these
formats are: XML ([RFC2629] and [writing-rfcs]), PDF, and PostScript.
Submitted forms are handled by the Check action documented in
Section 7.
The Upload page also has a validate-only flag, indicating that an
uploaded draft must not be posted and may be deleted immediately
after the validation (R74/b). Regardless of the validation results,
the stored draft meta-data is marked so that validation-only drafts
can be identified and deleted first by garbage collector for the
Toolset staging area (R75/b). Drafts uploaded in a validate-only
mode cannot be posted (R76/b); they would need to be uploaded again,
without the validate-only flag, and the validation results page
should explain that (R77/b). This flag is useful for tools using
online validation, especially for bulk draft processing. Hint: it
may be better to implement this flag as a hidden HTML input field to
simplify the interface for human submitters.
7. Check Action
The Check action preprocesses a submission, generates plain text
format (if needed, see R70), stores the submitted draft (all formats)
in the staging area, and then extracts meta-data and validates each
format (R6/a). Errors and warnings are indicated to the submitter in
the response via computer-friendly tag(s) and human-friendly text
(R7/a).
If any error is found, automated posting becomes impossible (R113/a).
This rule applies to all errors, even those that do not refer to R113
and do not explicitly prohibit automated posting. If automated
posting is not possible, the Toolset still gives the submitter an
option of sending the draft for manual validation and posting
(R114/a). Since each submission is treated in isolation, the
submitter also has an option of correcting the problem and
resubmitting the draft for automated posting.
Rousskov Informational [Page 9]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
The manual validation and posting route is a Toolset bypass mechanism
(see Section 14) not meant for fixing problems with the draft itself.
The Secretariat does not generally correct submitted drafts. If the
draft needs tweaking to match submitter's intent, then the draft
should be corrected by the submitter and resubmitted.
It is an error to submit a draft that has neither plain text nor XML
source format (R68/a). XML source is acceptable without accompanying
plain text only if the Toolset successfully generates a draft in
plain text format from the XML source, as a part of the processing
step documented below (R69/b). These rules imply that PDF- or
PostScript-only drafts cannot be auto-posted. Moreover, even manual
Secretariat involvement cannot help with posting these drafts, as the
IETF policy is to always require a plain text format in addition to
PDF or PostScript. Furthermore, drafts containing PDF or PostScript
format must not be auto-posted until the Toolset can validate that
their content matches the plain text format (R143/a).
The draft format acceptance rules above are meant to decrease the
chances that multiple posted draft formats for a single draft contain
substantially different documents. With experience, the rules may be
simplified so that, for example, only submissions containing nothing
but XML or plain text sources can be posted without Secretariat
involvement and all other submissions require manual actions to match
formats or extract meta-data.
7.1. Preprocessing
Submitting compressed drafts is a desirable feature, especially for
submitters behind slow or content-altering links. Compressed draft
formats may be accepted (R150/c). Compressed formats, if any, must
be decompressed during the preprocessing step (R151/c) so that other
processors do not have to deal with compressed formats. Hint: While
this specification does not document a list of supported compression
standards, it is expected that such popular methods as "zip" and
"gzip" should be accepted if compression is supported. Accepting a
collection of draft formats within a single compressed archive may
also be desirable.
XML source containing XML processor <rfc? include="..."> instructions
(PIs) is preprocessed to include references (R8/b). This step is
needed to remove external dependencies from XML sources and to
simplify tools processing posted XML. This document refers to such
XML processor instructions as "include PIs".
The XML preprocessor uses public database(s) to resolve PI references
(R85/b). The Toolset documentation specifies what databases are used
and how PIs are mapped to database entries (R86/b). The Toolset must
Rousskov Informational [Page 10]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
not rely on PIs' existence (R87/b) because some XML sources will be
preprocessed before the submission or will be written without PIs.
Hint: Local up-to-date copies of Marshall Rose's reference databases
at xml.resource.org can be used.
Both original and preprocessed XML sources may be posted later. The
original source with include PIs may be useful to the RFC Editor and
generation of diffs (against future or past original sources). The
preprocessed source without include PIs becomes the default public
XML source of the posted draft (R10/b). If any of the include PIs
known to the Toolset cannot be handled, an error is recorded (R11/b),
and the submitter is encouraged to do the preprocessing locally,
before submitting the draft (R111/b).
Uncompressed draft formats other than XML are not preprocessed.
7.2. Processing
When no plain text format of the draft is submitted, but XML sources
are available, the Toolset attempts to generate plain text format
from submitted XML sources (R70/b).
If XML sources are available, the Toolset generates HTML draft format
(R112/c). HTML generation failures should result in warnings, not
errors (R115/c). HTML generation is not meant to be implemented
until the Enhancement Stage is reached (R130/a). In general, HTML
generation is desirable because HTML drafts are usually easier to
navigate than plain text drafts due to improved overall readability
and links. As any Enhancement Stage feature, HTML generation may be
dropped or drastically changed to reflect then-current IETF consensus
and the experience of the first two implementation stages.
Hint: The Toolset implementers should not assume that draft formats
generated by the same tool from the same source format have
essentially the same content. The generation tool may have options
that allow authors to generate content exclusive to a specific
generated format. Such options might be abused.
7.3. Storage
The Check action needs to store all draft formats so that
successfully validated drafts can later be auto-posted at submitter
request. The action stores all submitted formats of the draft in a
staging area dedicated to the Toolset (R12/a). If, after garbage
collection, the staging area is full (i.e., the total used size has
reached the configured maximum capacity), the submitter and the
Secretariat are notified of a fatal error (R13/a).
Rousskov Informational [Page 11]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
7.4. Extraction
The Toolset extracts meta-data from the following stored draft
formats: plain text (R131/a), XML (R132/b), and other (R133/c). If a
meta-data extraction fails, the Toolset records an error (R15/a).
Meta-data extraction is necessary to validate and post the draft.
Extraction from all formats is necessary to validate that all
meta-data matches across all formats (in addition to and before the
Toolset can validate that the contents matches as well).
Section 16 documents a non-obvious implementation schedule related to
the above requirements. When only partial support for format
interpretation is available, only interpreted formats are subject to
extraction and validation requirements. In other words, if the
Toolset does not yet support interpretation of a given format, then
the corresponding information is stored and made available "as is",
regardless of the actual content.
The draft interpreter extracts the following meta-data from each
draft format (R16/a):
identifier: Also known as draft "filename". For example,
"draft-ietf-sieve-vacation-13".
version: A non-negative integer number representing draft version
number (also known as draft revision number). For example, the
number 7 in "draft-ietf-sieve-vacation-07". The number is usually
rendered using two digits, padding with "0" if necessary.
name: The common part of all draft identifiers for all versions of
the same draft. In other words, a draft identifier without the
version component. For example, "draft-ietf-sieve-vacation" in
"draft-ietf-sieve-vacation-07".
WG ID: Working Group identifier. For example, "sieve" in
"draft-ietf-sieve-vacation-07" is a WG ID. The WG ID value is
empty for drafts that are not WG-named drafts.
WG flag: True for WGN drafts and false for all other drafts. For
example, "true" for "draft-ietf-sieve-vacation-13". This flag
only influences the further handling of initial (version 00) draft
submissions, as far as the current document is concerned.
title: A human-friendly draft title. For example, the title of this
document is "Requirements for an IETF Draft Submission Toolset".
authors: A list of all draft authors. Each author's name and email
address are extracted.
Rousskov Informational [Page 12]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
abstract: The draft abstract text.
creation date: The draft version creation date.
expiration date: The draft version expiration date.
size: The number of pages and octets in the primary format of the
draft. The definition of a page depends on the format and may be
imprecise or arbitrary for some formats.
Failure to extract any field results in error (R95/a).
The Toolset requires author email addresses because they are
essential for notifying co-authors that their draft has been posted.
If there are no such notifications, a submitter adding a co-author to
the draft without the co-author's consent may not be caught for a
while. Such "surprise" co-authorships have happened in the past and
can be quite annoying. However, since the Toolset does not solicit
co-authors' consent to post a valid draft (and such solicitation
would not go beyond email control verification anyway), it is not
possible to stop a malicious submitter from adding co-authors without
their knowledge.
Like other meta-data items above, draft creation and expiration dates
are extracted from the draft; their values do not depend on the
actual submission time (i.e., the time the Check action starts).
However, the validation procedure (see Section 7.5) may declare any
extracted date invalid after taking into consideration current (i.e.,
submission) time, IETF draft expiration rules, and other factors
external to the draft.
7.5. Validation
Drafts need to be validated to catch broken submissions. Validation
also helps educate or warn authors of problems that may become
show-stoppers when the draft is sent for IETF Last Call and IESG
review. IETF standards have to follow a set of syntax and semantics
requirements (see the "ID-NITS" document at
<http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html>. Most of those requirements
are not enforced for Internet-Drafts. However, following them may
improve draft quality, reduce the IESG load, and increase the chances
of the draft being approved as an RFC.
When validating a given draft, it is important to distinguish between
absolute requirements and desirable draft properties. Both
categories are checked for, but violations have different effects
depending on the category. The two categories are detailed in the
following subsections.
Rousskov Informational [Page 13]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
When a valid draft is being posted and submitter authorization or
co-author notification is performed, validation results should be
included in the email (R81/b) so that the submitter can see meta-data
extraction and validation warnings. Note that these results cannot
include errors since only valid drafts can be posted.
7.5.1. Absolute Requirements
Violating any of these requirements would prevent a draft from being
automatically posted (R17/a). The offending draft would have to be
fixed or submitted for manual posting, with an explanation as to why
the absolute requirements need to be violated (or why the Validator
mis-detected violations). These explanations may speed up the
Secretariat posting decision and may help the Secretariat to improve
the Toolset implementation.
1. All available meta-data entries must match across all submitted
draft formats (R18/a). For example, if the interpreter managed
to extract a draft title from both the plain text and the PDF
format, both titles must match. This requirement prevents
accidental submission of mismatching formats.
2. Version 00 of a Working Group draft has a corresponding Working
Group approval (R20/a). This approval can be relayed before or
after the first draft submission, by a Chair or Secretary of the
WG. See Section 7.5.4 for related requirements.
3. The draft ID must be correct (R22/a), including the draft version
number value and format. Single-digit draft version numbers must
be left-padded with "0". Draft version numbers must start with
zero and increase by one with every new version. To satisfy this
requirement, the Toolset would have to consult the repository of
already posted drafts, including expired ones. If the IETF
infrastructure cannot handle version numbers greater than 99, the
Toolset must reject them (R158/a).
4. An IETF IPR Statement and other boilerplate required for drafts
according to [RFC3978] and [RFC3979] (or successors) must appear
in the draft text (R23/a).
5. The extracted creation date of the draft version must be within 3
days of the actual submission date (R159/a). Hint: Implementers
should be careful to handle creation dates that appear to be in
the past or in the future, due to possible time zone differences.
Making the most forgiving/permissive assumption about the time
zone should suffice.
Rousskov Informational [Page 14]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
6. The draft version expiration date obeys IETF draft expiration
rules.
7. No IETF submission blackout period applies. Hint: IETF blackouts
must be enforced based on submission time, not possible draft
creation time.
8. Posting the draft must not result in any DoS attack threshold to
be crossed (R97/a). Specific thresholds are documented in
Section 7.5.3.
9. XML sources (if available) are valid with respect to the XML
format [XML] (R153/c) and XML Document Type Definition (DTD) for
IETF drafts (R154/c). Note that during the first two
implementation stages, the corresponding validation failures
result in warnings and not errors (see Section 7.5.2).
The XML DTD for IETF drafts is documented in [RFC2629] with recent
changes available in [writing-rfcs]. Hint: Bill Fenner's "RFC 2629
validator" at http://rtg.ietf.org/~fenner/ietf/xml2rfc-valid/ (or its
derivative) may be useful for XML format and DTD validation.
Hint: If the extracted meta-data differs in the submitted draft
formats, the Toolset should use the meta-data from the most "formal"
format when populating the form entries for manual submission. On
the other hand, if most extracted entries come from a less "formal"
format, the Toolset may choose that format instead. For example, XML
source can be considered more "formal" than plain text format. The
Toolset may also offer the submitter an option to specify which
format should be used for populating the form. It is probably a bad
idea to mix-and-match the conflicting entries extracted from multiple
formats. Instead, either one format should be chosen when populating
the form or the form should contain several meta-data sections, one
for each format. The error messages will contain the exact mismatch
information.
Hint: The Toolset should accept dates without the day of the month,
as long as IETF rules do not prohibit them. The Toolset should make
the most forgiving/permissive assumption about the actual day of the
month when validating day-less dates.
7.5.2. Desirable Features
Violating any of the following requirements does not prevent the
submitter from auto-posting the draft (R24/a) but results in a
warning (R160/a). Each warning explains the corresponding violation
and provides advice on how to comply (R161/b). Hint: To ease
maintenance and encourage 3rd party updates, detailed explanations
Rousskov Informational [Page 15]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
and/or advice may be available as a resource separate from the
Toolset.
1. All automatically testable nits in the "ID-NITS" document at
<http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html> (R116/b) and
automatically testable guidelines at
<http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt> (R157/b). The
Toolset should use external tools to check these nits and
guidelines rather than embed checking code (R117/a). Hint:
Henrik Levkowetz's idnits tool can be used
(http://tools.ietf.org/tools/idnits/) and other tools can be
written or adopted.
2. New draft versions are expected (R21/b). For example, version 00
of an individual draft is always expected, while posting a new
version of a draft already under the IESG review should generate
a warning.
3. If both XML and plain text formats are submitted, the submitted
plain text matches what can be generated based on submitted XML
(R146/b).
4. The previous version, if any, was posted at least 24 hours ago
(R96/b). This warning may prevent some human errors, especially
when multiple authors may post the same draft.
5. XML sources (if available) are valid with respect to the XML
format (R155/b) and XML DTD for IETF drafts (R156/b). These
requirements become absolute after the second implementation
phase. See Section 7.5.1 for related information.
When comparing generated and submitted plain text formats to satisfy
R146, a standard word-based diff is sufficient for initial Toolset
implementations (R147/b). However, a custom fuzzy matching function
can be developed (R148/c) to minimize false warnings due to, for
example, draft text formatting differences. When differences are
detected, a complete diff may be provided on a separate page
(R149/c), in addition to the warning.
Hint: When comparing generated and submitted plain text formats, the
Toolset may try several recent xml2rfc versions for plain text
generation, to eliminate warnings due to differences among xml2rfc
versions.
Rousskov Informational [Page 16]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
7.5.3. DoS Thresholds
The following table documents DoS attack thresholds for various draft
categories. Daily limits correspond to all drafts (and all draft
formats) within the category. Other thresholds may be introduced and
these initial thresholds may be adjusted as necessary. The
thresholds are likely to become more smart/dynamic with experience.
DoS attack thresholds:
+---------------------------------+--------------+-----------+
| category | versions/day | MB/day |
+---------------------------------+--------------+-----------+
| drafts with the same draft name | 3 | 5 |
| drafts with the same submitter | 10 | 15 |
| WGN drafts with the same WG ID | 30 | 45 |
| all drafts | 400 | 200 |
+---------------------------------+--------------+-----------+
The thresholds are meant to limit destructive effects of DoS attacks
(e.g., full disks cause other tasks to fail), allow for capacity
planning (e.g., how much storage space the Toolset needs), and limit
annoying side effects of "too many" drafts being posted (e.g., when a
person receives posting notifications about a given draft or a given
working group). The Toolset should warn the Secretariat if total
submissions are approaching any threshold (R134/b). Hint: Bandwidth
available for submissions may need to be throttled (on a network
subnet basis?) to make reaching the daily size quota (with malicious
intent) difficult.
7.5.4. WG Approval
For version 00 of a WGN draft, the Toolset checks for an existing WG
approval (R125/a). If (a) no approval exists, and (b) the Toolset
does not support the "waiting for WG approval" feature, the Toolset
records an error (R135/a).
If (a) no approval exists, (b) the Toolset supports the "waiting for
WG approval" feature, and (c) the draft cannot be posted even if WG
approval is received, then the Toolset records a warning that a WG
approval would be required once all errors preventing draft from
posting are fixed (R137/b).
If (a) no approval exists, (b) the Toolset supports the "waiting for
WG approval" feature, and (c) the draft can be posted if WG approval
is received, then the Toolset explains the situation to the submitter
and asks whether an explicit approval from the WG should be solicited
or expected (R126/b). If the approval should be solicited, it is
Rousskov Informational [Page 17]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
solicited by the software or the submitter. If appropriate, the
Toolset puts the submission into a "waiting for WG approval" state
until the expected approval is available (R127/b). Otherwise, the
Toolset records a "no WG approval is expected" error (R138/b).
The details of manual or automated solicitation for WG approval is
outside the scope of this document. Hint: Initially, the submitter
will be responsible for soliciting a WG Chair approval, but this
process should eventually be automated.
Details of the approval recording and access interfaces as well as
the mechanism to resume the submission upon approval are out of this
document's scope.
8. Check Page
The Check page, created by the Check action, displays extracted draft
meta-data and validation results (R25/a). The purpose of the page is
to allow the submitter to verify whether the stored draft and
automatically extracted meta-data match the submitter's intent and to
be informed of validation problems.
Meta-data items specified in Section 7.4 that failed validation
checks must be marked specially (rather than silently omitted or
ignored) (R26/b). Hint: rendering those items in red, with links to
corresponding validation errors or warnings, may force authors to pay
attention.
Validation messages include both errors and warnings. Each
validation message refers to normative document(s) containing the
corresponding validation rules (R27/b).
The Check page allows the submitter to enter external meta-data
(Section 8.1) (R28/a). If validation was successful, an
"automatically post the draft now" button is provided (R29/a).
Regardless of validation results, "adjust and post manually" and
"cancel" buttons are provided (R30/a).
The Check page provides a preview of the draft plain text format
(R31/a), with a link to see how the entire draft (with all its
formats) would look if posted (R82/b). Hint: the Check page preview
should be sufficiently long to let authors detect obvious draft
mismatch or misinterpretation errors but short enough to avoid
dominating the page. Displaying the first line of the draft through
the last line of the abstract may be sufficient.
For draft updates, the Check page reports the time and the submitter
of the last update (R83/b). This information is especially useful
Rousskov Informational [Page 18]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
when multiple authors are working on the same draft. The page also
provides a link to generate a diff against the last posted version
(R84/c).
8.1. External Meta-Data
The Check page solicits the following meta-data from the submitter.
This information must be supplied by submitter because it cannot be
extracted from the draft:
Submitter email address (R32/a). When submitter is not an
expected submitter (see Section 3), automated posting is not
possible and the draft has to go through the Secretariat (R98).
Hint: A set of checkboxes next to extracted author names along
with a "none of the above" checkbox with an input field would
suffice.
A list of drafts replaced by this draft (R33/c). This is useful
to make replaced drafts invisible. This document does not specify
any actions necessary to actually replace an existing draft
because existing draft manipulation is out of scope, and because
security concerns and other complications of such actions would be
better addressed by a separate specification.
Primary email address for discussion of this draft (R71/b). Hint:
The Toolset can suggest the WG mailing list address for WGN
drafts, (submitting) author address for individual drafts, or even
the first email address in draft text. Offering a few likely
addresses instead of relying exclusively on user input would also
reduce the number of typos.
Except for the submitter email address, external meta-data is
optional (R109/a).
If a given submitter email address belongs to an expected submitter
(i.e., belongs to one of the categories below), the Toolset performs
submitter authentication during a Post Now action (R19/a).
Otherwise, an error is reported (R118/a).
The following possible expected submitters are identified by the
Toolset, without any Secretariat intervention:
For version 00 of a draft, any submitter (R119/a).
For version N+1 of a draft, an author of version N of the same
draft (R120/a). This requirement only needs to be satisfied for
drafts for which Nth version was posted using the Toolset; other
drafts may not have the meta-information available that is
required to reliably get a list of authors.
For a WGN draft, a Chair of the corresponding WG (R121/b).
For any draft, an IESG member (R122/c).
Rousskov Informational [Page 19]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
9. Post Now Action
The Post Now action checks that the draft has been successfully
validated (R34/a), validates external meta-data (including submitter
email address) (R35/a), and posts the draft (R36/a). The submitter
is notified of the action progress and the final result (R37/a).
The external meta-data contains the submitter's email address. As a
part of the validation procedure, the Post Now action authorizes the
submitter. The initial action implementation checks that the
submitter has access to email sent to that address (R38/a).
Eventually, the Toolset should accept client certificates signed by
IETF, PGP-signed email, and/or other forms of client-side
authentication to eliminate the weak and annoying email access check
(R110/c). If submitter authentication fails, the submission
eventually and silently times out (R39/a).
The Toolset provides both web (R99/a) and email (R139/b) interfaces
for confirming email access. Hint: To check submitter's access to
email, the tool can email a hard-to-guess cookie or token to the
submitter's address. To continue with the submission, the submitter
is requested to paste the cookie at the specified URL, go to the
token-holding URL, or respond to the email.
Immediately after sending an email to the submitter, the Post Now
action generates an intermediate Receipt page that explains Toolset
expectations and provides the submitter with the submission ID
(R100/a). That number allows the Secretariat to troubleshoot stuck
submissions (R101/a) and can also be used for checking submission
status without Secretariat involvement (R140/b).
Immediately after posting the draft, the Toolset notifies all authors
(with known email addresses) of the posting (R102/a). The
notification email contains the information available on the
"successful posting" Receipt page described below (R103/a).
If draft posting is successful, the submission state is marked as
available for deletion (R105/a) so that the garbage collection
routine eventually deletes it.
9.1. Receipt Page
A successful Post Now action reports at least the following
information on the final Receipt page (R104/a):
o the draft ID and a link to the draft status page.
o the draft title, authors, and abstract.
Rousskov Informational [Page 20]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
o the submission ID.
o a link to the draft submission status page (when status queries
are supported, see R140).
o the submitter's name and email address.
The primary purpose of the Receipt page is to inform all draft
authors that (supposedly) their draft has been posted. The secondary
purpose is to let authors create a permanent record of the event and
troubleshoot postings. The same information should be sent to other
parties interested in the draft (e.g., to the WG mailing list), but
3rd-party notification specifics are out of this document's scope.
10. Adjust Action
The Adjust action generates the Adjust page (R40/a), populating it
with available extracted meta-data and external meta-data, as well as
validation results and a preview. Some information may be missing,
depending on draft interpretation and the success of preview
generation.
11. Adjust Page
The Adjust page includes the same information as the Check page, but
allows the submitter to adjust all extracted draft meta-data (and,
naturally, external meta-data) at will (R41/a). Such adjustment is
necessary when automated extraction failed to extract correct
information. To avoid any mismatch between draft and its meta-data,
adjusted drafts cannot be automatically posted and require manual
validation by the Secretariat (R42/a). Secretariat staff can post
drafts with adjusted meta-data as described in Section 14.
The Adjust page allows the submitter to enter an informal comment
explaining why adjustments are necessary and automated posting mode
cannot be used (R48/a). Such comments may be essential for the
Secretariat in their efforts to troubleshoot the problem.
The "post manually" and "cancel" buttons are provided (R43/a). The
former is backed by the Post Manually action (Section 12).
Rousskov Informational [Page 21]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
12. Post Manually Action
The Post Manually action sends adjusted meta-data and a draft pointer
to the Secretariat for manual validation and posting (R44/a). A
receipt page is generated, instructing the submitter to wait (R45/a).
The Secretariat will notify the submitter once the draft is posted or
rejected. This notification is sent by the Toolset if the
Secretariat is using the Toolset to post the draft (R46/a).
13. Receipt Page
The Receipt page is generated by various actions to inform the
submitter of the current submission status and further actions. The
contents of the page is likely to be highly dependent on the action
and state for which receipt is being generated. This section
documents general requirements applicable to all actions and states.
The Receipt page should give the submitter a Uniform Resource
Identifier (URI) or another identifier that can be used by
Secretariat for manual troubleshooting of the submission (R63/a).
The identifier should be perpetual (R64/a) even though the associated
details are likely to be eventually lost (e.g., draft submission data
and logs are deleted from the staging area as a part of the garbage
collection routine). Hint: Tools should distinguish old identifiers
from invalid ones; when a given identifier is referring to deleted
data, the tools accepting the identifier should inform their users
that the identified submission is recognized, but the related
information has expired.
The Receipt page should give the submitter a Secretariat
point-of-contact to report submission problems (R65/a).
14. Bypassing the Toolset
A buggy Toolset implementation or unusual circumstances may force a
submitter to submit a draft to the Secretariat for manual processing.
This can be done by choosing the "manual posting" route supported by
the Toolset (R47/a) or, as a last resort, by emailing the draft
directly to Secretariat. In either case, an informal "cover letter"
has to accompany the draft. The letter should explain why the
automated interface cannot be used.
When processing manual submissions, the Secretariat may be able to
use the Toolset. A Manual Check page similar to the default Check
page provides authenticated Secretariat staff with editable meta-data
fields and a "force posting" action (R50/b). The forced posting
action accepts meta-data fields "as is", does not verify submitter
access to email or WG draft authorization, and posts the draft as if
Rousskov Informational [Page 22]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
no validation errors were found (R51/b). The Manual Check page
should still contain all the errors and warnings identical to those
seen by ordinary submitters (R106/b) so that the Secretariat knows
what the Toolset is unhappy about (if anything).
Using manual processing may result in significant posting delays.
Generated submission receipts or notifications ought to give the
submitter an expected processing time estimate (R53/a).
The intent of this mode is to provide a way for submitters to bypass
bugs or limitations of the automated mechanisms in order to post an
"unusual" draft or to post a draft under "unusual" circumstances.
One example would be a draft that does not contain standard IETF
boilerplate but has a special IESG permission to post the draft with
the experimental boilerplate. Another example is a draft that fails
automated validation tests due to a validator bug.
The bypass mode is also likely to be used (effectively) by the
majority of submitters during the Trial stage of the Toolset
implementation, when few submitters know about (or are allowed to
use) the Toolset.
15. Email Interface
The Toolset should have an email interface for automated posting of
valid drafts (R55/b). While virtually every documented Toolset
functionality can, technically, be implemented behind an email
interface, features other than posting of valid drafts are believed
to be prohibitively awkward to implement or use via email.
The email interface accepts a draft as a set of email part(s) (one
per draft format) (R56/b). For example, the plain text format can be
submitted in the "body" of the email message, while XML source format
can be optionally sent as an "attachment" of the same email message.
Each part can either contain the actual format data (R141/b) or a
single URL pointing to it (R142/c). In the latter case, the Toolset
has to fetch the format data. Details of the URL-fetching option are
not documented here, but it is assumed that HTTP URLs are supported
(at least), and fetching errors are reported. This document does not
specify how the format of each email part is determined, but it is
assumed that MIME type and content would need to be analyzed.
After accepting the draft, the Toolset uses the sender's email
address to select the submitter identity (R57/b), checks the
submission (R58/b), and posts the draft if the check is successful
(R59/b). The submitter should be notified of the outcome of the
draft submission via email (R60/b). Other requirements for the web
interface (including requirements on submission preprocessing, draft
Rousskov Informational [Page 23]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
validation, submitter authentication, draft posting, and
notification) apply to the email interface.
Therefore, a typical successful submission via email interface may
result in the following exchange of messages ("T" is for "Toolset",
"S" is for "submitter", and "A" is for "all authors and submitter"):
S-->T: the draft version
S<--T: a challenge to verify email access
S-->T: a response to the challenge
A<--T: warnings and the receipt
where the message containing the challenge may include warnings as
well.
When draft validation fails, the following emails may be exchanged:
S-->T: the draft version
S<--T: errors and receipt
Email parts/attachments that are not recognized as draft formats are
not considered as draft formats. Such parts are ignored by the
Toolset (R107/b), except that a warning is generated for each
unrecognizable part containing more than whitespace (R108/b). These
two requirements are meant to make the interface robust in the
presence of email signatures and other parts outside of the submitter
control.
Hint: Toolset actions can be implemented to support email and web
interfaces without code duplication.
While both web and email interfaces allow for fast posting of valid
drafts, there are significant differences between the two interfaces.
Primary advantages of the email interface are:
off-line mode: A submitter can do all the manual work required to
submit a draft while being disconnected from the network. The
email client actually submits the draft when connectivity is
regained.
poor connectivity: Email systems are often better suited for
automated transmission and re-transmission of emails when network
connectivity is poor due to high packet loss ratios, transmission
delays, and other problems.
Rousskov Informational [Page 24]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
convenience: Some IETFers consider email interfaces as generally
"more convenient".
Primary advantages of the web interface are:
confirmation: A submitter is given a chance to verify that automated
extraction of meta-data produced reasonable results. Other useful
confirmations are possible (e.g., "Are you sure you want to post a
version of the draft that was updated 30 seconds ago by your co-
author?").
validation: A submitter can validate the draft without posting it.
quality: Non-critical warnings may prompt the submitter to postpone
posting to improve draft quality.
manual adjustments: The submitter can adjust extracted meta-data and
ease Secretariat work on manually posting an unusual draft.
meta-data: The submitter can specify optional external meta-data
(that cannot be extracted from the draft itself). For example, an
email address for draft discussion can be specified.
context help: The web interface makes it easy to provide links to
extra information about input fields, errors, posting options,
deadlines, etc.
opaqueness: Files submitted via the web interface are arguably less
susceptible to various in-transit transformations and
misinterpretation than emails. Emails are often mutated by mail
agents (e.g., automated disclaimers added by senders and extra
line feeds added by recipients).
convenience: Some IETFers consider web interfaces as generally "more
convenient".
16. Implementation Stages
This section defines the Toolset implementation stages or phases.
There are three consecutive stages, marked with letters "a", "b", or
"c". Earlier-stage requirements must still be satisfied in later
stages. All requirements need to be interpreted and evaluated in the
context of the current stage and the currently implemented features.
For example, requirement R68 applies to the first stage but refers to
XML draft format that may not be supported until the second stage. A
correct interpretation of R68 until XML support is added is "it is an
error to submit a draft without a plain text format".
Rousskov Informational [Page 25]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
Unless otherwise noted, requirements listed in later stages may be
covered in earlier stages, but do not have to be. If the
implementers decide to add some functionality from a future stage,
they have to be very careful to satisfy all requirements related to
that functionality. Unfortunately, there is no reliable, pragmatic
way to identify "all requirements" related to a given feature.
(a) Trial Stage: Initial basic implementation to test major concepts
and relieve the Secretariat from handling the most common
submission case. This stage focuses on plain text draft
submission via the web interface. The trial stage should take a
dedicated professional about 45 calendar days to finish (i.e., to
comply with all the listed requirements).
(b) Production Stage: Support for all major features. Once this
stage is completed, the Secretariat should only handle unusual
draft submissions. This stage should take about 100 calendar days
to finish. Gradual release of implemented features is possible
and expected. Specifically, the XML support is expected before
email interface support.
(c) Enhancement Stage: A never-ending stage focusing on sophisticated
features (e.g., draft interpretation or validation) that improve
the overall quality of the Toolset. This stage is documented
primarily to highlight the overall direction of the Toolset; its
requirements are often imprecise and many are expected to change.
Implementation experience is likely to result in changes of the
Toolset requirements. Such changes should be documented as a part of
stage evaluation activities.
17. Testing
Before letting the Toolset go live, thousands of posted drafts can be
used to test the meta-data extraction algorithms. Such testing can
minimize the number of drafts being sent on for manual handling
because of meta-data extraction failure.
Other Toolset features may also be testable using posted drafts. A
simple pair of scripts can be used to test basic functionality of the
web and email interfaces.
Hint: The IESG may require test results before accepting the initial
implementation. If automated, the above approach can be used for
regression testing as well.
Rousskov Informational [Page 26]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
18. Security Considerations
Removing humans from the draft submission and posting process (a.k.a.
automation) requires adding features to make the Toolset reliable in
the presence of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and attempts to
corrupt the draft repository. Ideally, the Toolset needs to resist
both premeditated malicious actions and good-intent accidents.
This document contains specific requirements to minimize the impact
of DoS attacks (e.g., R97). The requirements are designed with the
assumption that it is acceptable for the Toolset to block valid
submissions during a DoS attack as long as the Toolset maintainers
are notified and already posted drafts are not damaged.
This document also contains many specific requirements related to
detection of drafts violating IETF posting rules. Those requirements
help reduce the number of "bad" drafts posted by mistake but do not
offer reliable protection from submitters with malicious intent:
Since automated tools do not truly understand drafts (and will not do
so in the foreseeable future), it is technically possible to post a
rogue draft violating IETF posting rules. For example, a draft may
contain abstract text that makes the IETF-approved IPR statements
following the abstract meaningless or legally non-binding.
Stronger submitter authentication may be required to deter malicious
submitters. The documented authentication mechanism (i.e., read
access to one's email) is deemed appropriate for deployment of the
first versions of the Toolset, under close Secretariat supervision.
Hint: to increase chances of detecting problems early enough, it may
be a good idea to automatically inform a designated human of every
posted submission (during initial deployment of the Toolset).
19. Compliance
A Toolset implementation is compliant with this specification if it
satisfies all normative requirements (i.e., the phrases marked with
"Rnnn" as defined in Section 3). Compliance should be evaluated for
each implementation stage as some requirements do not apply to some
stages.
The IESG evaluates implementations and interprets requirements as
necessary.
Rousskov Informational [Page 27]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
Appendix A. Comparison with Current Procedures
This section summarizes major differences between the draft
submission approach currently in use by IETF and the proposed
Toolset, including violations of the current IETF rules.
o The Toolset allows posting of XML and PDF draft formats. The XML
format is not currently accepted by the Secretariat, and legality
of PDF acceptance by the Secretariat has been questioned. XML
sources should be accepted to enable IETF tools and participants
to have access to raw draft meta-data and content. They are also
useful to the RFC Editor and, hence, it is a good idea to validate
and get them "into the system" early. The latter argument applies
to PDF drafts as well, although the first Toolset versions are not
expected to interpret PDF drafts.
o The Toolset may eventually generate HTML draft formats from XML
draft sources (see R112). Currently, IETF does not provide HTML
draft formats -- the Secretariat does not accept HTML sources and
no HTML is generated from accepted draft sources. Note, however,
that this document does not suggest that the Toolset should
eventually accept drafts in HTML format.
o The Toolset defines "WGN draft" as a draft whose name starts with
"draft-ietf-". All other drafts are treated as individual drafts.
Currently, an IETF WG does not have to follow a single WG draft
naming format. Thus, the 00 version of a draft that the WG
considers a WG draft can be posted by the Toolset without WG
consent. Affected WGs would have to deal with the consequences of
their decision not to use a common naming format. The Tools team
suggests that IETF requires WGs to name their drafts using a
single format to minimize confusion. Hopefully, there are no
humans named "Ietf" or, at least, none of them wants to auto-post
individual drafts.
o For some drafts, the Toolset verifies that the submitter is
"expected" (e.g., an author of the previous draft version or WG
Chair). Currently, the Secretariat does virtually no such
verification, but an email submission interface and a human
presence in the submission loop have apparently been sufficient to
prevent massive automated attacks. The change is needed to
prevent a simple script from using the web interface to overwrite
posted IETF drafts with junk. Hopefully, the IETF will eventually
have a decent authentication scheme making the submitter checks
simpler, less rigid, and more transparent.
Rousskov Informational [Page 28]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
o The Toolset will automatically notify authors of posted drafts.
Currently, neither the submitter nor any of the co-authors are
explicitly notified when the draft is posted. Notification is
meant, in part, to allow co-authors to detect cases where their
name is put on the authors list without permission. Eventually,
there will be a general IETF mechanism to allow 3rd parties such
as ADs, chairs, or reviewers to register for notifications about
draft postings.
o The Toolset may eventually accept compressed drafts (see R150).
Currently, the Secretariat does not accept "zip" archives due to
virus contamination concerns. A proper implementation of the
Toolset must address such concerns, while the Secretariat may
still need to reject certain formats if they are submitted via the
manual route.
Appendix B. Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Harald Tveit
Alvestrand (Cisco), Brian E. Carpenter (IBM), Frank Ellermann, Bill
Fenner (AT&T), Barbara B. Fuller (Foretec), Bruce Lilly, Henrik
Levkowetz (Ericsson), Larry Masinter (Adobe), Keith Moore (University
of Tennessee), Pekka Savola (Netcore), Henning Schulzrinne (Columbia
University), and Stanislav Shalunov (Internet2).
Special thanks to Marshall Rose for his xml2rfc tool.
Rousskov Informational [Page 29]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
Normative References
[RFC2629] Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629,
June 1999.
[RFC3978] Bradner, S., "IETF Rights in Contributions", BCP 78,
RFC 3978, March 2005.
[RFC3979] Bradner, S., "Intellectual Property Rights in IETF
Technology", BCP 79, RFC 3979, March 2005.
[XML] World Wide Web Consortium, "Extensible Markup Language
(XML) 1.0", W3C XML, February 1998,
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210.
Informative References
[writing-rfcs] Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML (revised)",
Work in Progress, April 2004.
[secretariat] "Private communication with the IETF Secretariat",
2004.
[OSD] "The Open Source Definition, version 1.9", Open Source
Initiative, 2005, available at
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php.
Author's Address
Alex Rousskov
The Measurement Factory
EMail: rousskov@measurement-factory.com
URI: http://www.measurement-factory.com/
Rousskov Informational [Page 30]
RFC 4228 ID Submission Toolset: Requirements December 2005
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
retain all their rights.
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Intellectual Property
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-
ipr@ietf.org.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Rousskov Informational [Page 31]