Your last statement - that a break in the series would invalidate
it - argues very forcibly that no such "gap" can be allowed to
occur going forward (unless you are of the opinion that IP, TCP,
UDP etc. are "done evolving"). Hence, something would have to take
the place of the IETF and the RFC series practically immediately.
What I said was that a gap in standards-track RFCs would render the
series useless.
I think this is basically correct. The series wouldn't immediately
become useless but would become less useful over time. The individual
documents for IP, TCP, etc. would continue to be useful until the
community felt that they had been replaced.
Were we to be foolish enough to allow a prolonged hiatus in the RFC
series, there would be other SDOs more than willing to take over
maintenance and extension of the IP suite, of course labeling the
resulting standards "Implementation Agreements" or "Recommendations"
instead of "RFCs".
pretty much agree with this also. abandoning the RFC series (without an
immediate replacement from IETF) would create a vacuum that other SDOs
would be eager to fill. even with an immediate replacement there would
likely be some market confusion if we changed the name from RFC to
something else.
More importantly, later IETF work (even if called "RFCs") would not
be readily viewed as a natural evolution of the original IP
standards, and would require us to actively market them.
concur.
Keith
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