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Re: References to prior work

2007-03-05 12:35:11


John C Klensin wrote:

--On Monday, 05 March, 2007 09:19 -0800 Paul Hoffman
<paul(_dot_)hoffman(_at_)vpnc(_dot_)org> wrote:

At 8:53 AM -0800 3/5/07, Bob Braden wrote:
  *> FWIW, I don't think we want to start bouncing specs
  because they *> don't pay homage - in this case all the
  similarities are probably *> the only obvious ways to add
  authorization tokens to a TLS *> handshake. Such downrefs
  to dead documents would anyway add yet *> more cruft to the
  RFC process, so let's not.
  *>
  *> S.
  *>

s/cruft/integrity/
How does adding a downref to a dead document add more
integrity to the RFC process?

Independent of the merits in this particular case, it provides
history and context.   We have learned, or should have learned,
two things over and over again:

        (1) Failure to provide context and a track through
        rejected and alternative suggestions results in "new"
        proposals to try the same things again, usually from
        people who had no idea about the prior work.
        
        (2) Providing good documentation that recognizes the
        origins of an idea and its date, even if there were some
        changes from the original version, can be very helpful
        in defending our work against patent vultures who try to
        make filings on work that the IETF has had under
        development for some time.  Personally, I've reached the
        point that I would favor having most protocol
        specification RFCs contain a sentence of the form of
        "The work described here derives from a series of
        earlier drafts, including [ref, ref, ref] the first of
        which was circulated in 1968."

I think something along these lines might be ok, so long as
its not a significant barrier to progress - I'd hate if every
new author had to be an I-D historian, or if anyone who wanted
to slow down a document could play the system using this. I
have a hard time seeing how that can be done.

Anyway, I think this is an area where the tools team could
come to the rescue yet again, given the right set of
requirements, maybe e.g. including a link to an auto
generated list with the IETF LC announcement. (Before
anyone asks: I'm not volunteering, but would be happy
to chat about it over beer in Prague.)

S.


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