At 09:54 AM 7/11/2005 +0300, john(_dot_)loughney(_at_)nokia(_dot_)com wrote:
Hi,
I was wondering if someone could help me out on this one. I was doing a bit
of analysis on the current RFC list, and noticed that some Draft Standard
documents are obsoleted. For example:
954 NICNAME/WHOIS. K. Harrenstien, M.K. Stahl, E.J. Feinler.
Oct-01-1985. (Format: TXT=7397 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC0812) (Obsoleted
by RFC3912) (Status: DRAFT STANDARD)
This really made me scratch my head. One would imagine if a protocol is
obsoleted
by another, it would not be listed as a Draft Standard any longer.
What is the reason for continuing to list something obsolete as a Draft
Standard?
Because Jon Postel always did it that way? Seriously, the idea is that the
document
was a Draft Standard when it was published. You can obsolete it, but you
cannot
change its publication status. Should its status change to Historic when it is
obsoleted? Maybe, although we have never done it that way (and we do have 20+
years of history).
(Note that in fact the RFC Editor added "publication status" to
its index
database last year; the new field is included in rfc-index.xml. This
shows the status upon publication, in cases where the status is
changed later.)
There are quite a few twisty little passages lurking here, and they mostly
stem from
a basic semantic confusion between a document (RFC) number and the protocol
that is specified in that document (or maybe not). The RFC number is in fact a
document number, but we have chosen to overload it as a protocol designator.
We say "RFC 793" or "TCP" more or less interchangeably, but 793 is really
only a document.
In my view, a result of the ISD proposal in newtrk should be to cleanly
remove this
semantic overloading of RFC numbers. An ISD would define a protocol
independent of
a document identifier (RFC number). I believe that we should move with all
deliberate speed to engineer an ISD-based system for IETF standards, rather
than
to make small patches to RFC designations.
Bob Braden
John
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