[pcap-ng-format] Moving forward with pcap-ng

[Richard Sharpe]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 7:14 PM, Richard Sharpe
<realrichardsharpe at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Today I talked with a bunch of Wireshark folks and to Loris Degioanni
> about moving forward with pcap-ng.
>
> I think the consensus is that moving forward consists of:
>
> 1. Completing the spec,
> 2. Enhancing it with additional features/items that a good number of
> us agree are useful.
>
> The way to achieve both of these is through this mailing list.
>
> Loris is agreeable to handing over the spec to a volunteer or
> volunteers who can do these things.
>
> So, I guess I am calling for that volunteer or volunteers.
>
> I have also tried contacting the people at the Hone project who have
> already made private extensions to pcap-ng. I am trying to encourage
> them to post their extensions here so we can discuss them and figure
> out whether we agree with them or not.
>
> In addition I will encourage other organizations like the CloudShark
> folks and the PCAPR folks to participate here.

I would like to volunteer for this effort, and Jasper has also
volunteered his time as well. I think that that gives us sufficient
momentum to move forward.

What I would like to suggest is the following:

1. Finalize the 1.0 version of the standard by the end of July.
(However, the end of August could be considered.) I think that we
should only do minor cleanups here and not propose any new block types
for 1.0.

2. Work on the next version of the standard. It should be backward
compatible and software that does not understand any new features in
the new standard should be able to skip new records, options, etc.

Following up on discussion at Sharkfest, I would also suggest that
proposals for changes to the standard cannot be accepted unless they
are accompanied by changes to the reference implementation (ntar)
showing how to parse the new features. In addition, all such code must
be contributed to the project under the BSD license.

Please comment if you feel strongly about this matter.

-- 
Regards,
Richard Sharpe
(何以解憂？唯有杜康。--曹操)