Internet DRAFT - draft-learmonth-hackerspace-header
draft-learmonth-hackerspace-header
Network Working Group I. Learmonth
Internet-Draft Uni. of Aberdeen
Expires: February 12, 2015 August 11, 2014
An Internet Message Header For Providing Hackerspace Affiliation
Information
draft-learmonth-hackerspace-header-00
Abstract
This memo presents a new Internet message header that allows the
sender of Internet messages to provide hackerspace affiliation
information to the recipients. Recipients of Internet messages can
use this header to look up the hackerspace affiliation of the sender
of the message.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on February 12, 2015.
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1. Introduction
A hackerspace is a community-operated workspace where people with
common interests, often in computers, machining, technology, science,
digital art or electronic art, can meet, socialize and/or
collaborate. Hackerspaces, like a lot of other Internet communities,
perform a lot of their communication on Internet mailing lists. Some
hackers may subscribe to the mailing lists of other hackerspaces, or
communicate on Internet mailing lists for discussion between
hackerspaces on a regional, national or global level. It can be
helpful for hackers to identify to which hackerspace other hackers
they are communicating with are affiliated.
[RFC1036] defines an Organization: header which contains "a short
phrase describing the organization to which the sender belongs".
[RFC2076] notes that this header was never standardised for use in
e-mail but only in USENET messages. Some MUAs still have implemented
this header however.
If the Organization: header were to be used, it would be more
suitable for it to contain a reference to the sender's employer or
school than the sender's hackerspace. The header's text is also
unstructured and does not lean itself to being read by machines.
This memo presents a new Internet message header that allows the
sender of Internet messages to provide hackerspace affiliation
information to the recipients of the message in a machine-readable
format.
2. Hackerspace: header
The header's text is built from the name of the hackerspace and the
URL of the hackerspace's home page as described below.
hackerspace = "Hackerspace" ":" SP space-name SP "<" space-url ">"
space-name = string
space-url = http_URL
http_URL is defined in [RFC2616].
The Hackerspace: header MAY be added to Internet messages by those
affiliated with a hackerspace. MUAs MAY optionally only add the
header when sending messages to hackerspace-related recipients.
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3. IANA Considerations
A new entry is requested in the Permanent Message Header Field Names
[TO BE REMOVED: This registry can be found at: http://www.iana.org/
assignments/message-headers/message-headers.xhtml] registry
maintained by IANA. The header field name requested is "Hackerspace"
and it is applicable to the protocol "mail".
4. Security Considerations
Privacy issues may arise as, being a header, most encryption schemes
for Internet mail will not encrypt the text.
When a message is recieved with a Hackerspace: header, it should not
be implicitly trusted as it may have been incorrectly defined by the
sender.
5. References
[RFC1036] Horton, M. and R. Adams, "Standard for interchange of
USENET messages", RFC 1036, December 1987.
[RFC2076] Palme, J., "Common Internet Message Headers", RFC 2076,
February 1997.
[RFC2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
Appendix A. Example usage with mutt
The first of the following .muttrc statements will add a Hackerspace:
header to outgoing mails showing an affiliation with 57North Hacklab
and the second statement will unhide the Hackerspace: header when
viewing emails in the mutt pager.
my_hdr Hackerspace: 57North Hacklab <http://57north.co/>
unignore hackerspace
Author's Address
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Internet-Draft Hackerspace: Internet Message Header August 2014
Iain R. Learmonth
University of Aberdeen
School of Engineering
Kings College
Aberdeen AB24 3UE
Scotland
Email: irl@fsfe.org
Learmonth Expires February 12, 2015 [Page 4]
