At 20:36 30/08/2000 -0400, Scott Bradner wrote:
> An informational RFC certainly meets these requirements.
I don't think we want to say that any info RFC qualifies
so how do we say just what we want to say and no more?
we publish info RFCs containing external standards when:
- we don't have change control
- that is the easiest way to get free/stable publication
We could standardize MD5 until we were blue in the face, and we would still
not have the power to redefine what MD5 does. That's as good a definition
of "external standard" as any.
[For the record, I believe that not putting HMAC on the standards track was
a mistake; before that RFC publication, HMAC did not exist as a
referencable entity; if the IETF discovered an error in its description,
the IETF could (and should!) repair that error by recycling the
specification. But that's water under the bridge]
For reference purposes, things would be simpler if we created a REF series
just like the FYI series: an additional property of info RFCs that says
"normative references to these documents are permitted".
But that's solving the problem by creating more paperwork, something I'm
generally not in favour of.
Harald
--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, alvestrand(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com
+47 41 44 29 94
Personal email: Harald(_at_)Alvestrand(_dot_)no