already there are too many folks who avoid issuing
I-Ds except when required to do so because they feel that the
publication process is too burdensome and too slow, and too
many people treat I-Ds as something akin to final form documents
(as in, they need to be close to "right") rather than working
drafts.
It seems to me that that has a lot more to do with
the ascendancy of the professional standardizer,
as far as I can tell a lot of it comes from people who write
documents in microsoft word as opposed to nroff. so you could
well be right. :)
combined with excessive scrutiny by the trade press
(aggravated by those "HEY! WE ISSUED AN INTERNET
DRAFT!!!" press releases).
as far as I can tell, the trade press doesn't actually read the drafts.
they just believe the vendors when they say "we've submitted something
to IETF".
IMHO, we'd be far better off if the trade press actually did scrutinize
the stuff that the vendors produce.
Keith