Folks,
It thas been suggested that a request to place email-arch on the standards
track should carry with it a specification of what constitutes
"interoperability" for the document.
This anticipates eventually seeking movement from Proposed to Draft, which
requires interoperability. The challenge of deciding on criteria for
interoperability, for standards track documents that do not specify a
protocol, has come up before. So I think it is quite a good idea to deal with
it sooner rather than wait until seeking Draft status.
I suspect that another advantage to doing this exercise now is that it also
provides a rather concrete basis for deciding whether the document is of a
type that is appropriate for standards track.
I'd like to request discussion and suggestions from you, with the goal of
reaching consensus.
Here's a simple candidate:
If a document has achieved a significant level of use as a normative
reference, it probably qualifies as being "interoperabille" by virtue of being
integrated into the technical community. Perhaps the best non-protocol example
of this is [RFC2119] Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels”.
Comments? Suggestions for other criteria?
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net