One document matched: draft-nottingham-for-the-users-00.txt
Network Working Group M. Nottingham
Internet-Draft
Intended status: Best Current Practice August 7, 2015
Expires: February 8, 2016
Considering the Users of Internet Standards
draft-nottingham-for-the-users-00
Abstract
Internet standards serve and are used by a variety of constituencies.
This document contains guidelines for explicitly identifying those
constituencies, serving them, and determining how to resolve
conflicts between their interests, when necessary.
It also mandates end users as the highest priority constituency for
Internet standards.
Note to Readers
The issues list for this draft can be found at
https://github.com/mnot/I-D/labels/for-the-users .
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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This Internet-Draft will expire on February 8, 2016.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. The Internet is for End Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Identifying the Constituents of Internet Standards . . . . . 4
3.1. Handling Change in Constituencies . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Avoiding Unnecessary Constituents . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction
As the Internet has become prevalent in many societies, it has also
unavoidably become a profoundly political thing; it has helped
overthrow governments, revolutionize social orders, control
populations and reveal people's secrets. It has created wealth for
some individuals and companies, while destroying others'.
The IETF is most comfortable making purely technical decisions; our
process is defined to favor technical merit, and our known bias
towards "rough consensus and running code" is well suited to this
area of work.
Nevertheless, the running code that results from our process (when
things work well) inevitably has an impact beyond technical
considerations, because the underlying decisions afford some uses,
while discouraging others. Or, in the words of Lawrence Lessig
[CODELAW]:
Ours is the age of cyberspace. It, too, has a regulator... This
regulator is code -- the software and hardware that make
cyberspace as it is. This code, or architecture, sets the terms
on which life in cyberspace is experienced. It determines how
easy it is to protect privacy, or how easy it is to censor speech.
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It determines whether access to information is general or whether
information is zoned. It affects who sees what, or what is
monitored. In a host of ways that one cannot begin to see unless
one begins to understand the nature of this code, the code of
cyberspace regulates.
All of this begs the question: Who do we go through the pain of rough
consensus and write the running code for?
There are a variety of identifiable constituents that Internet
standards can provide benefit to, such as (but not limited to) end
users, network operators, schools, equipment vendors, specification
authors, specification implementers, content owners, governments,
non-governmental organisations, social movements, employers, and
parents.
Good specifications will provide benefit to all of the relevant
constituencies, because standards do not represent a zero-sum game.
However, on occasion we do need to balance the benefits of a protocol
design decision between two (or more) constituents.
Likewise, sometimes efforts are brought to the IETF that represent
the technical needs of a specific constituency that does not take the
needs of others into account. On its own, such a specification meets
a technical need for its community, but at the expense of others.
When presented with such a proposal, we need to decide how to handle
it.
Currently, such decisions occur in an ad hoc fashion, often without
explicitly being discussed. This approach works reasonably well in
many cases; even if a constituency is not directly represented in the
process, there are often advocates for their interests, and
ultimately protocols that disadvantage a particular constituency tend
to be either rejected by it or eventually replaced.
However, we do sometimes expend a considerable amount of energy
mitigating potential harm to under-represented constituencies, and
often harm to a constituency is not so onerous or obvious as to
dissuade them from using something (e.g., [RFC6265]).
Furthermore, the Internet is not a value-neutral space, as per the
IETF's mission [RFC3935]:
The IETF community wants the Internet to succeed because we
believe that the existence of the Internet, and its influence on
economics, communication, and education, will help us to build a
better human society.
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To better define the criteria that we use to make such decisions when
necessary, document them, minimize potential harm, and to help
fulfill the mission of the IETF, this document outlines a set of
guidelines about how the constituents of Internet standards should be
identified, and when necessary, balanced.
1.1. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
2. The Internet is for End Users
Internet standards MUST prioritize end users higher than any other
constituents. While networks need to be managed, employers and
equipment vendors need to meet business goals, etc., our mission is
to "build a better human society" [RFC3935] and - on the Internet -
society is composed of what we call "end users."
Furthermore, the success of the Internet to date is arguably due
largely to its bias towards end user concerns; without a firm
preference for their benefit, trust in the Internet will erode, and
its value - for all constituents - will be greatly diminished.
This does not mean that end users have ultimate priority; there may
be cases where genuine technical need of another constituent requires
that end user requirements compromise. However, such tradeoffs need
to be carefully examined, and avoided when there are alternate means
of achieving the desired goals. If they cannot be, these choices and
reasoning should be carefully documented.
For example, IPv6 [RFC2460] identifies each client with a unique
address - even though this provides a way to track end user activity
and helps identify them - because it is technically necessary to
provide networking (and despite this, there are mechanisms like
[RFC4941] to mitigate this effect, for those users who desire it).
3. Identifying the Constituents of Internet Standards
Internet standards MUST document relevant primary constituents and
their interrelationships.
For example, HTML does so using the priority of constituencies in the
HTML Design Principles [PRIORITY]:
In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors
over specifiers over theoretical purity. In other words costs or
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difficulties to the user should be given more weight than costs to
authors; which in turn should be given more weight than costs to
implementors; which should be given more weight than costs to
authors of the spec itself, which should be given more weight than
those proposing changes for theoretical reasons alone. Of course,
it is preferred to make things better for multiple constituencies
at once.
Note how the relative priority of constituents is explicit; this is
intentional and encouraged. However, it need not be a strict ranking
in all cases; in some areas, it can be more useful to give equal
weight to constituencies, so as to encourage the tussle [TUSSLE].
Likewise, the responsibilities of, or expectations upon, constituents
can vary greatly. For example, end users of Web browsers cannot be
reasonably expected to make informed decisions about security, and
therefore design decisions there are biased towards default security.
When applicable, the expectations upon a constituency SHOULD be
documented.
Extensions to existing standards MUST document how they interact with
the extended standard's constituents. If the extended standard's
constituents are not yet documented, the extension MAY estimate its
impact, in coordination with that standard's community and the IESG.
The burden of this documentation need not be high; if HTML can do it
in a paragraph, so can most standards. While it might be appropriate
in a separate document (e.g., a requirements or use cases draft) or
the specification itself, documenting constituents in the WG charter
has considerable benefits, since it clarifies their relationships up-
front.
Inevitably, documenting and interpreting the constituent roles will
become controversial; this is to be expected, and is still preferable
to avoiding the discussion. The point is to make it explicit, so
that the effected constituencies can be made aware of the discussion,
and judge the outcome.
3.1. Handling Change in Constituencies
Changes in the use, deployment patterns, legal context, or other
factors of a standard can bring pressure to re-balance the priorities
of existing constituents, or insert new ones (usually, when a
standard is either extended or evolved).
Such changes MUST NOT violate the priority of existing constituents,
or those reasonably assumed by existing constituents, without
informed consent. Note that this may preclude the change completely,
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as it is often impossible to gain the informed consent of a large or
diffuse group of constituents (e.g., end users).
For example, there has been increasing pressure to change HTTP
[RFC7230] to make it more amenable to optimization, filtering, and
interposition of other value-added services, especially in the face
of more pervasive encryption (denoted by HTTPS URIs). However, since
HTTPS is already defined as a two-party protocol with end-to-end
encryption, inserting a third party in any fashion would violate the
expectations of two existing constituents; end users and content
publishers. Therefore, the HTTP Working Group has refused to
consider such changes.
3.2. Avoiding Unnecessary Constituents
In protocol design, intermediation is often thought of as "those
parties on the direct path between two people attempting to
communicate"; e.g., middleboxes, proxies and so on.
When discussing constituencies, this definition can be expanded to
include those parties that have the ability to prevent or control
communication between two parties. This naturally includes
middleboxes, but can also include third parties not directly on-path.
For example, HTTP has on-path intermediaries (proxies, gateways,
etc.), but also off-path intermediaries, in the form of the DNS
registrar, the DNS server, and also the Certificate Authority if TLS
is in use. Certificate Transparency [RFC6962] potentially adds yet
another intermediary to this protocol suite.
While there might be a good technical reason to interpose such an
intermediary, it also introduces a new constituent, and thus needs to
be done with due consideration of the impact on other constituents.
Therefore, unnecessary constituents SHOULD be avoided when possible
in Internet standards.
4. IANA Considerations
This document does not require action by IANA.
5. Security Considerations
This document does not have direct security impact; however, applying
its guidelines (or failing to) might affect security positively or
negatively for various constituents.
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6. References
6.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/
RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
6.2. Informative References
[CODELAW] Lessig, L., "Code Is Law: On Liberty in Cyberspace", 2000,
<http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/01/code-is-law-html>.
[PRIORITY]
van Kesteren, A. and M. Stachowiak, "HTML Design
Principles", November 2007, <http://www.w3.org/TR/
html-design-principles/#priority-of-constituencies>.
[RFC2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, DOI 10.17487/RFC2460,
December 1998, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2460>.
[RFC3935] Alvestrand, H., "A Mission Statement for the IETF", BCP
95, RFC 3935, DOI 10.17487/RFC3935, October 2004,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3935>.
[RFC4941] Narten, T., Draves, R., and S. Krishnan, "Privacy
Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in
IPv6", RFC 4941, DOI 10.17487/RFC4941, September 2007,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4941>.
[RFC6265] Barth, A., "HTTP State Management Mechanism", RFC 6265,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6265, April 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6265>.
[RFC6962] Laurie, B., Langley, A., and E. Kasper, "Certificate
Transparency", RFC 6962, DOI 10.17487/RFC6962, June 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6962>.
[RFC7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing", RFC
7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.
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[TUSSLE] Clark, D., Sollins, K., Wroclawski, J., and R. Braden,
"Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow's Internet",
2002,
<http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/Publications/PubPDFs/
Tussle2002.pdf>.
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jacob Appelbaum for making the suggestion that led to this
document.
Thanks also to the WHATWG for blazing the trail.
Thanks to Edward Snowden for his comments regarding the priority of
end users at IETF93.
Thanks to Harald Alvestrand for his substantial feedback and Joe
Hildebrand, Niels ten Oever, and Martin Thomson for their
suggestions.
Author's Address
Mark Nottingham
Email: mnot@mnot.net
URI: http://www.mnot.net/
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