I was not passing judgement on the guidance presented in
draft-tsvarea-sipchange. I was pointing out that a document
cited as a reference in draft-iab-considerations is
effectively contradicted. (My proposed solution was not
intended as an endorsement; it was based on what appeared
to be the most expedient way to address the inconsistency,
giving precedence to the more established document).
I also am not going to make a statement about your comments
themselves; however, I suggest that they would be most
productively directed to the authors of the draft-tsvarea-sipchange
document.
In any case, I assert that there is an inconsistency, and
that a prudent course of action would involve reaching
consensus on these issues before either document is published
as an RFC.
/a
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Elz [mailto:kre(_at_)munnari(_dot_)OZ(_dot_)AU]
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 11:39
To: Adam Roach
Cc: 'floyd(_at_)icir(_dot_)org'; 'ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org'
Subject: Re: Impending publication: draft-iab-considerations-02.txt
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 10:11:01 -0500
From: Adam Roach <adam(_at_)dynamicsoft(_dot_)com>
Message-ID:
<9BF66EBF6BEFD942915B4D4D45C051F3A640ED(_at_)DYN-TX-EXCH-001(_dot_)dynami
csoft.com>
| On the topic of "P-" headers, however, there is still
guidance that
| such extensions require, at a minimum, publication as an RFC:
|
| "[A]ny P-header used outside of a very restricted
research or teaching
| environment (such as a student lab on implementing
extensions) MUST
| meet those requirements and MUST be documented in an
RFC and be IANA
| registered."
This kind of text in any RFC (or other publication) is no more than an
attempt at extortion. Nothing published in an RFC can
possibly constrain
what anyone else does, anywhere. Believing otherwise is ludicrous.
We can constrain our own behaviour, since that's what we
control, so we
could (assuming that we believe IANA is part of "us") specify
that IANA
must not register a header unless it is documented in an RFC. But we
cannot tell people that they're not allowed to use such
things. Or more
correctly, of course we can tell them that, but without any
expectation
that many of them will take us seriously.
Whether or not the IETF decides that it should adopt work
done by others
(even just as much as re-publishing it for information) will
be something
that should get decided on a case by case basis (or as agreed
with other
bodies in appropriate circumstances), but pretending that the
IETF is the
supreme lord of the universe, and everyone else must bow down to the
pronouncements in RFCs (even in cases where IETF created technology is
under discussion) is laughable.
kre