MEDIAMAN

Summary

The MEDIAMAN working group met to progress draft-ietf-mediaman-6838bis. The primary focus of the session was aligning the document with the ongoing "IANA-bis" effort (specifically the revisions of RFC 8126 and RFC 7120) to avoid duplicating registry procedures. Key discussions centered on the potential elimination of provisional registrations in the standards tree, the management of contact information in templates, and whether to formalize namespaces for vendor prefixes. Alexey Melnikov announced his upcoming retirement from Google, noting this as likely his last in-person session as chair.

Key Discussion Points

Relation to IANA-bis

Alexey Melnikov opened the discussion on referencing the updated IANA-bis documents (8126-bis and 7120-bis) for registry functions like early assignment.
Pete Resnick questioned the timeline of IANA-bis and whether locking draft-ietf-mediaman-6838bis to those documents would cause significant delays.
Mark Nottingham spoke in favor of alignment for the sake of consistency, even if it requires waiting for the IANA-bis documents to stabilize.
Amanda Baber (IANA) confirmed that the early allocation process for SDOs is a key area for potential reliance on 7120-bis.

Early Allocation and Provisional Registrations (Issues 80, 70, 78, 86)

Mark Nottingham suggested that early allocation (Issue 80) should follow 7120-bis but be limited to the Standards Tree.
Regarding provisional registrations (Issue 70), Mark Nottingham proposed retiring this status in the Standards Tree. This would involve:
- Moving existing SDO-backed provisional registrations to the early registration process.
- De-registering registrations held by individuals in the standards tree after a grace period, as individual registrations in that tree are considered a historical quirk.
Harald Alvestrand supported retiring provisional registrations that do not qualify under the new rules, placing the burden on registrants to find an SDO sponsor if they wish to remain in the standards tree.
For Issue 86, the group discussed whether early allocation should be available for the "community process." Mark Nottingham noted that the community process is intended for well-established formats, making "provisional" or "early" status a contradiction in terms.

Administrative Fields and Contact Info (Issues 85, 71)

Issue 85 (Change Controller Approval): Mark Nottingham noted that IANA already has processes for verifying change controller approval. Amanda Baber confirmed IANA handles these checks for all registries. The group agreed to remove redundant text from draft-ietf-mediaman-6838bis and defer to standard IANA processes.
Issue 71 (Contact Information): The group discussed the need to clarify the three types of contacts in the media type template (Author, Contact, Change Controller). Mark Nottingham proposed adding a "Contacts" section to the draft to explain these fields while referencing the general advice in 8126-bis.

Specification Availability and Namespaces (Issues 63, 81)

Issue 63: The group agreed to wait for IANA-bis to stabilize its definition of "stable specification" and policies regarding paywalled vs. free specifications.
Issue 81 (Namespaces): The group discussed whether to formalize a registry for vendor prefixes (e.g., microsoft-). Mark Nottingham and Alexey Melnikov concluded that expert judgment has been sufficient to prevent squatting and that creating a formal registry might create an "attractive nuisance." The decision was to close the issue without making changes.

Reviewer's Checklist

Alexey Melnikov presented the reviewer's checklist, currently hosted on the IANA website. The consensus was to keep this as an IANA/AD-managed document rather than publishing it as an RFC to ensure it remains easy to update.

Decisions and Action Items

Decision: The working group will reference 7120-bis for early allocation in the Standards Tree.
Decision: Re-evaluate the disposition of current provisional registrations in the Standards Tree. Mark Nottingham will research the associated bodies for each current provisional registration.
Decision: Close Issue 78 (Provisional media types URL) if the provisional process is retired.
Decision: Close Issue 81 (Namespaces) without action; continue relying on expert judgment.
Action Item: Pete Resnick and Mark Nottingham to incorporate references to IANA-bis into draft-ietf-mediaman-6838bis.
Action Item: Mark Nottingham to draft a "Contacts" section for the registration template.
Action Item: Amanda Baber to provide correspondence/data regarding one-off AD approvals for individual registrations in the standards tree to the mailing list.

Next Steps

Await stability in the IANA-bis documents (8126-bis and 7120-bis) before finalising dependencies.
Conduct an editorial pass of draft-ietf-mediaman-6838bis to ensure flow and clarity.
Confirm decisions regarding the retirement of provisional registrations on the mailing list.

Reference Materials:

Chair Slides

Automatic IETF Minutes