- Description:
For several years email community discussed revising RFC 5321 and RFC 5322
to move them to Internet Standards. Both documents are at Draft Standard
(which no longer exist) and they have significant number of errata submitted.
Concerns were also voiced about these documents, because they either
don't talk about now accepted best email practices or in some cases may mislead
readers about which practices are the best.
- Status: WG Forming
- Responsible AD: Barry Leiba
- BoF proponents: Alexey Melnikov <alexey.melnikov@isode.com>, Pete Resnick <resnick@episteme.net>
- BoF chairs: Alexey Melnikov, Seth Blank
- Number of people expected to attend: 50
- Length of session (1, 1.5, 2, or 2.5 hours): 100 minutes (but 50 mins will be fine)
- Conflicts to avoid (whole Areas and/or WGs): EXTRA, JMAP, DMARC, UTA, CALEXT, WPACK, DISPATCH, SECDISPATCH, GENDISPATCH
- Agenda
- This is likely to be a working session going over rfc5321bis and rfc5322bis issues
- Links to the mailing list, draft charter if any, relevant Internet-Drafts, etc.
- Mailing List: ietf-smtp@ietf.org (Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/ietf-smtp/)
- Draft charter:
The base documents defining Internet messaging —
colloquially, email -- are RFC 5321 (protocol) and RFC 5322
(format). These are revisions and consolidations of prior
documents and were last published in 2008. They currently sit
at Draft Standard status, a status that actually no longer
exists according to current IETF procedure.
Since then some errata have accumulated (both submitted
to IETF and reported directly to editors), as well as comments
made about these documents not necessarily describing best
email practices. There is now exists sufficient
critical mass to undertake a limited review and revision of
these documents for the purpose of advancing them to Internet
Standard status.
This working group will conduct that limited review and
revision, and publish new versions of these documents at
Internet Standard status, per RFC 6410. The limited review is
restricted to include corrections and clarifications only, such as
verified errata and errata marked as "held for document update",
however the WG is not limited to only addressing submitted errata.
No new protocol extensions or amendments will be considered
for inclusion into 5321bis and 5322bis documents, unless
they are already published as RFCs.
The working group will also work on Applicability
Statement/BCP in parallel with 5321bis and
5322bis, to capture relationships to other widely deployed work
(for example recommended extensions) and current email
practices.
Upon completion of these three milestones, and assuming the
participants still have the momentum to do so, the working
group may undertake similar review and revision of other email
specifications. Such future word will require rechartering.
- Relevant drafts:
- Internet Message Format: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-resnick-rfc5322bis/
- SMTP: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-rfc5321bis/
- Applicability Statement for IETF Core Email Protocols: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-email-core-as/