b) violate the rights of I-D authors who allowed IETF to publish
their I-Ds based on the understanding that IETF would only do
so for a short time
The claims about I-D author rights being violated by yet another I-D
archive are dishonest, silly red herrings, or jokes.
It's not merely that I-D's are already archived, albeit inconveniently
and obscurely. Essentially all I-D's that are submitted with the
expectation something very similar to their contents will become an RFC.
Would those claiming to find relevant limits in the boilerplate or other
rights of I-D authors really have us believe that if the IESG and RFC
Editor had taken their text and published it as an RFC that their rights
would have been violated? If not, then what "right" is violated
by the text being kept by the IETF as an I-D instead of an RFC?
It is entirely understandable that after submitting an I-D, its author,
editor, or compiler might have second thoughts, but that's just tough.
As Ms. Shore said, anyone who speaks or writes has regrets, but those of
us who are adults don't try to revise history to hide our mistakes.
The only "right" of an I-D author that might be violated by the IETF
keeping a copy of an I-D as an I-D instead of as an RFC is the "right" to
not look like a fool or not have the world know what fraction of the
author's ideas are bad or unpopular.
Thinking about that, I can see strong commercial reasons for companies
that hope to steal the cachet of an RFC to want I-D's to disappear. If
the Acme Widgets salescritter knew in advance that submitting a version
of Avian Carriers would not go down the memory hole if the IETF decided
it is stupid, then the salescritter might be less enthusiastic about
flogging bogus I-D's. It's also remotely possible a trade rag "author"
might check the I-D archives the next time the Acme Widgets salescritter
announces the "submission" of wonderful Acme technology to the IETF to
see how often Acme Widget "submissions" endure.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com