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Re: Revising full standards

2007-12-06 19:26:41


--On Thursday, 06 December, 2007 16:55 -0800 Eric Burger
<eburger(_at_)bea(_dot_)com> wrote:

Hardly seems worth the effort.

Of the 5092 RFCs published, just 67 are Full Standards.

Of those, how many realistically need updates?

Ad hoc may be a more efficient approach.  Or, are you thinking
about a "lessons learned from RFC 2821-bis"?

Most of it would actually be "lessons learned from RFC 2821".
The only new issue introduced by 2821bis is the need, as some
have read the rules, to formally demonstrate that email works
and interoperates (not just whatever changes were introduced in
2821, but the whole business).  Now, if you and a few thousand
other people get this message, I'd claim a reasonable case has
been made that it works, but one could always debate that.

On the other hand, the STD number situation is leading us into
silly states.  For example, there are documents all around the
world that do what we told them, which is to write "implement
STD 10" for "support SMTP".   Try the exercise of determining
what STD 10 is today (because a pointer to RFC 821 would be
wrong and one to 2821 would violate the rules).  So one
alternate fix is to abandon STD numbers.  Those silly states are
a bad idea and since, as you point out, there are only 67 full
standards, maybe we don't need the numbers.

    john



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