[CCWG-ACCT] Attempt to summarize discussion regarding Mission and Contract

[Greg Shatan]

Andrew,

I support the direction you're moving in.

Greg

On Thursday, November 12, 2015, Andrew Sullivan <ajs at anvilwalrusden.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I sent an alternative to this in the "whole text" message I just
> mailed, but I thought it better to follow up to this specifically in
> this thread.
>
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 04:05:40PM -0500, Greg Shatan wrote:
> >    - services (i.e., the software processes by which commands received
> via
> >       the Internet are processed and a response is generated and
> > transmitted via
> >       the Internet, to be viewed in a web browser, email client, or the
> like)
> >       which use the Internet’s unique identifiers, or
>
> That can't be the definition of services, I think.  First, I'm not
> entirely sure that we want to say "receives commands": DNS, for
> instance, is a completely bilateral protocol that just sends messages
> back and forth.  The messages are the same format in "command" (query)
> and response, differeing technically only in the setting of a bit.  I
> _could_ make an argument that these are commands, but I don't think we
> want anything that tenuous.  In general, not all services are
> client-server.  Second, not all responses are to be viewed: some are
> machine to machine (so nobody views them) and some are non-visual (SIP
> calls, for instance).  Third, not all Internet services are
> connnection-oriented: UDP datagrams, for instance, are connectionless.
> Finally, for a given service and a given inbound datagram, response
> datagrams might or might not be generated depending on various local
> policies.  It's problems like this that make people avoid trying to
> define too precisely.
>
> It does seem that a service on the Internet is something that accepts
> datagrams, when those datagrams are not necessarily the result of
> datagrams sent by the same thing.  Therefore, I _think_ this will
> work:
>
>     services (i.e., any software process that accepts datagrams from
>     the Internet, when those datagrams are not themselves necessarily
>     the consequence of a datagram previously sent by the software
>     process itself) that use the Internet’s unique identifiers
>
> I'm not absolutely sure this is right, but I think it might be close
> enough.  The problem with it, of course, is that every single thing
> connected to the Internet uses at least one of the Internet's unique
> identifiers (this problem is, remember, part of what alarmed the IAB
> in the first place).  So this basically says, "Any software process
> that accepts datagrams from the Internet," and that very nearly boils
> down to, "A program with a socket open to the Internet."  If that's
> ok, I guess I can live with it, though it'd be good to get some more
> technically-clueful (or even, some would argue, "at least one pair
> of") eyes on this.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at anvilwalrusden.com <javascript:;>
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