This really is NEWTRK material, but I think part of the question is
"how long is it SUPPOSED to take to get to Proposed?"
I happen to like the idea that you could write an I-D during one IETF
meeting cycle, talk to people about it at the meeting, rev it a couple
of times on a mailing list during the next meeting cycle, and forward
it for publication after discussion at the next meeting. That's a
six-month to eight-month interval, more or less.
People have told me I'm hopelessly optimistic. Note that my timeline
omits "update charter to include this work item", for instance.
Please followup to NEWTRK. It's been too quiet there anyway, and
that's the chartered WG for this topic...
Spencer
From: "Conroy, Lawrence (SMTP)" <lwc(_at_)roke(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk>
When I pass my driving test, the Examiner doesn't consider me to
be a
good driver; merely that
I'm unlikely to kill someone so readily.
I had thought that this was the analogy for Proposed, but this
hasn't
been my experience; protocol quality
is often considered before we get that far.
Given the amount of time we take to raise things to Proposed, *if
people are serious about the protocol*
then there may well be implementations out there already - a number
of
protocols have had interoperation
tests whilst still I-Ds, simply due to the glacial nature of the
process (i.e. people are overloaded)
and the requirement for quality (or "perfection", depending on who's
saying it).