From: Harald Alvestrand <Harald(_at_)Alvestrand(_dot_)no>
Subject: Re: An Internet Draft as reference material
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 14:30:13 +0200
At 14:34 20/09/2000 +0900, Lee, Jiwoong wrote:
Dear all
What do you think about "de facto" that many technical documents
are currently using Internet Drafts as referece material?
I've seen next two cases:
1. An Internet Draft refers to another Internet Draft.
Common. It means that if the reference is normative, the I-D cannot be
published as an RFC before the other.
If both refer normatively to each other, they must be published at the same
time.
(If the reference is not normative, the draft name is replaced by "work in
progress" when the RFC is published. Then, sometimes, the draft is lost...)
2. A book refers to another Internet Draft.
Stupid, but nothing the IETF can do about it.
In electronic books, the Right Thing would be to include all drafts cited
as appendixes; in paper books, this might add too much to printing costs.
For most of the time it is just plain stupid, however, there are material wich
is published in ID form but later down the line is being dropped but still form
the fundament for design decissions made in IDs making it all the way to RFCs.
Now, if you are going to write a book and want to discuss this backdrop and
give a fuller picture then you will have to refer to these IDs. This is really
a problem which the IETF has aswell, since this material is not available it is
not as easy for a newcommer to get the full picture as those involved in the
process has. For instance IPv6 has this problem. When you are in the process,
you should feel that it is the Right Thing to drop this old material, but the
question is if it is really the Right Thing in the long run. Some of these IDs
should really be considered as being published as Informational RFCs for the
purpose of giving the background material.
I'm not sure of the next case. Any body observed this?
3. An RFC refers to an Internet Draft.
Never (except as "work in progress", as noted above - and then the draft is
not mentioned by filename).
This is a case where having this old background material could be valuble to
have.
Note, certainly will not all IDs be of interest, but some of them do represent
knowledge which should be considered worthy of keeping.
IMHO this is a problem, but it is not apparent for everyone being "in" the
process, but some is aware of this...
Cheers,
Magnus