"John" == John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com> writes:
John> --On Wednesday, 27 September, 2006 23:22 -0400 Sam Hartman
John> <hartmans-ietf(_at_)mit(_dot_)edu> wrote:
>> I support the textual descriptions of the changes Eliot made.
>> However I'm concerned that as with any effort to revise RFC
>> 2026, there will llikely be changes in wording that have
>> unintended consequences. I am not personally convinced that
>> the value of revising RFC 2026 justifies the risk of problems
>> in these changes.
John> I share this concern. See below.
>> I'm quite convinced that if we choose to revise RFC 2026 we
>> should do so with a small set of goal changes--probably no more
>> than Eliot and Scott have proposed. I will resist adding my
>> pet improvements to 2026 to the list. I encourage others who
>> don't want this effort to drown under its own weight to do the
>> same.
John> While I agree with that, I suggest that we are in something
John> of a conundrum. Right now, 2026 is badly out of date in a
John> number of areas. It reflects procedures and modes that we
John> no longer follow, only a fraction of which are addressed by
John> Eliot's draft. There is general community understanding and
John> acceptance that we are operating, not by the letter of 2026,
John> but by the combination of 2026 and a certain amount of,
John> largely undocumented, oral tradition (I expect to hear from
John> the usual suspects on that assertion, but it is the way it
John> is). To make things worse, we have some BCPs that
John> effectively amend 2026 but that are not referenced in
John> Eliot's draft -- I've pointed out some of them to him, which
John> I assume will be fixed, but may have missed others.
John> If we produce a 2026bis that does not address some of those
John> changes in procedure, we risk getting ourselves into a royal
John> mess in which it isn't clear whether the authority for
John> unchanged sections is 2026-as-modified,
John> 2026-plus-oral-tradition, or whether the new document
John> reinstates the long-abandoned procedures. That situation
John> could easily bury us in procedural lawyers (probably the
John> usual amateurs) and dickering... and we have enough of those
John> problems already, at least IMO.
This is exactly my concern. Trying to revise 2026 and getting it
partially wrong could be more expensive than living with oral
tradition.
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