Editor's Note: Minutes received 7/28
CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Alan Emtage/Bunyip and Peter Deutsch/Bunyip
Minutes of the Internet Anonymous FTP Archives Working Group (IAFA)
The Minutes of the San Diego meeting were accepted as read.
The Site Administrator's Draft Document has now been split into two
parts by the authors. It was agreed that this was appropriate and the
change endorsed. Document 1 describes the procedure for setting up and
maintaining an anonymous FTP archive site. Document 2 describes a list
of templates which may be used by anonymous FTP archive sites to
distribute information about the site itself as well as data and
services served by that site.
A detailed discussion of the current drafts of the two new documents was
conducted.
o Questions about the examples used in the second document were
raised due a possible perception of ``UNIX bias'' in the current
draft. The general consensus was that those individuals wishing to
perform the exercise of constructing appropriate templates for
other operating systems should do so and contribute them for
incorporation into the final document. However, it was considered
that the current draft was adequate for the purpose.
o It was agreed that a section on ``Packaging for Delivery'' was
needed, which would explain the various compressing, archiving and
other packaging techniques now in use on the Internet. This will
include (but not be limited to) UNIX tar and compress, Mac BINHEX,
etc. formats. A draft of this section will be inserted for the
next draft.
It was agreed that the section on ``ethics'' and ``illegal'' practices
such as storing copyrighted material without proper release, etc.
should be strengthened and split recognizing however, that the
definition of ``illegal'' may vary widely between different
jurisdictions. Administrators should be encouraged to check for the
rules, laws and regulations governing their own environment. A
disclaimer on liability was also suggested.
Following up on a suggest made at the last meeting in San Diego, it was
agreed that a section on ``Other recommended tools for archive
administrators'' should be added. This will provide a brief overview of
other information tools now available on the Internet with care taken
not to ``endorse'' any specific project. This will also be added for
the next draft.
It was agreed that, given the quick progress being made on Uniform
Resource Locators (URL), Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI) and Uniform
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Resource Serial Numbers (URSN) (with work coming out of the UDI BOF and
probable Working Group), that fields to accommodate these be added to
the appropriate templates in Document 2.
It was agreed that more work needs to be done on the ``Why you should
run an archive'' section of the first document.
Ellen Hoffman of Merit (ellen_hoffman@merit.edu) has volunteered her
site to coordinate submissions of Services records (as defined in the
second document) until services directories start to become widely
available. It was agreed that an additional field ``Sponsoring
Organization:'' should be added to support this sort of ``proxy-list''
service.
No agreement was reached on the the issue of developing a ``cost
daemon'' program for ranking the distance or reachability of an archive
from a particular user's host, although there was some interest in the
idea. Peter Deutsch (peterd@bunyip.com) will act as coordinator for
Volunteers interested in working on such a project.
Questions were asked about a recommended procedure for registering new
information sites as they come on-line. Currently they are discovered
through ad hoc methods such as a posting to comp.archives.admin, email
to an archie site, etc. It was agreed that this should be noted in the
first document, advising new sites to post their availability to
comp.archives and other avenues for the distribution of this information
should be pursued.
In discussing the section on security, it was pointed out that a number
of sites continue to run anonymous FTP archives to exchange non-public
information. Such sites function without password protection and the
information so stored is publicly available via the standard anonymous
FTP login procedure. It was agreed that a strengthened section on
security would specifically warn against this practice, as it
constitutes a form of ``security through obscurity'' that is not
endorsed and which has already been shown to be problematic in practice.
The subject of a companion ``User Guide to Anonymous FTP'' was again
raised and it was again agreed that such a document would be useful.
Ellen Hoffman of Merit (ellen_hoffman@merit.edu) and April Marine of SRI
(april@nisc.sri.com) have agreed to examine a number of current freely
available documents with the intention of editing them to make them
suitable for a more general audience.
In a general discussion on missing attributes in various templates, it
was suggested that the following be considered:
o In templates describing textural information a field to list the
ISO standard encoding for language and character set should be
added.
o In templates describing documents (such as IAFA-ABSTRACT) a field
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listing the ISBN number (if available) should be considered.
o Where appropriate, fields to list appropriate ``Distribution:''
and ``Copying:'' fields should be added.
o Additional available contact information such as FAX numbers should
be added.
New Business
It was agreed that work should begin on documenting URIs, UDIs and
URSNs. It was agreed that the chairs in concert with Tim Berners-Lee of
CERN (timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch) would canvas the Area Directors for User
Services and Applications to determine whether IAFA should play a role
in this, or new/additional Working Groups should be tasked with the job.
It was agreed that there might be interest in a document explaining
tools intended to coordinate sharing of information across the Internet.
These might include existing tools or look at specifications to
encourage new tools. A summary of such tools will be investigated and a
concrete proposal prepared for the next meeting.
Attendees
Mark Baushke mdb@cisco.com
Pravin Bhagwat w2pravin@watson.ibm.com
George Brett ghb@jazz.concert.net
Mitchell Charity mcharity@lcs.mit.edu
Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
James Conklin jbc@bitnic.educom.edu
Daniel Dern ddern@world.std.com
Peter Deutsch peterd@cc.mcgill.ca
Alan Emtage bajan@cc.mcgill.ca
Jill Foster jill.foster@newcastle.ac.uk
Jim Fullton jim_fullton@unc.edu
Joan Gargano jcgargano@ucdavis.edu
James Halpin halpin@turkey.sw.stratus.com
Alisa Hata hata@cac.washington.edu
Ellen Hoffman ellen_hoffman@um.cc.umich.edu
Lenore Jackson jackson@nsinic.gsfc.nasa.gov
Sylvain Langlois Sylvain.Langlois@der.edf.fr
Thomas Lenggenhager lenggenhager@switch.ch
Hock-Koon Lim lim@po.cwru.edu
Kim Long klong@sura.net
April Marine april@nisc.sri.com
Ed Menze menze@cs.arizona.edu
Charlotte Mooers mooers@nnsc.nsf.net
Chris Myers chris@wugate.wustl.edu
Clifford Neuman bcn@isi.edu
Hank Nussbacher hank@vm.tau.ac.il
Bob Page bob.page@eng.sun.com
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Rakesh Patel rapatel@hardees.rutgers.edu
Michael Patton map@lcs.mit.edu
Marsha Perrott mlp+@andrew.cmu.edu
Mel Pleasant pleasant@cs.rutgers.edu
Mark Prior mrp@itd.adelaide.edu.au
David Reiser dsr@codex.prds.cdx.mot.com
Robert Reschly reschly@brl.mil
Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu
Karen Roubicek roubicek@faxon.com
Anthony Rutkowski amr@sprint.com
Henry Sanders henrysa@microsoft.com
Richard Schmalgemeier rgs@merit.edu
Tim Seaver tas@concert.net
Vincent Sgro sgro@cs.rutgers.edu
Erik Sherk sherk@sura.net
Michael Slocombe slocombe@bbn.com
Jane Smith jds@jazz.concert.net
Karen Sollins sollins@lcs.mit.edu
Simon Spero ses@cmns.think.com
Marten Terpstra terpstra@ripe.net
Chris Weider clw@merit.edu
Moira West mjw@cert.org
Evan Wetstone evan@rice.edu
Scott Williamson scottw@nic.ddn.mil
Yung-Chao Yu yy@qsun.att.com
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