Re: draft-housley-two-maturity-levels-00

Russ,

Thanks for reviving this topic.  As the YAM working group has been finding, 
trying to elevate even the most well-established and widely-used protocols to 
Full standard remains problematic.
As your Acknowledgments section cites, your proposal nicely adds to the 
considerable repertoire of variations that explore how to simplify things.
What is less clear is the model or theory or perspective that makes this 
particular variation the one to prefer.  Perhaps it does indeed offer the best 
result, but what is the basis for deciding?
The fact that few protocols have sought Draft, nevermind Full, status is a 
rather strong indication that the industry does not care about or need either. 
Absent changes in the criteria for a label and/or the process for achieving a 
second (or third) status level, what is going to motivate the community to 
behave differently?
Interoperability testing used to be an extremely substantial demonstration of 
industry interest and of meaningful learning. The resulting repair and 
streamlining of specifications was signficant.  If that's still happening, I've 
been missing the reports about lessons learned, as well as indications that 
significant protocol simplifications have resulted.  While the premise of 
streamlining specifications, based on interoperability testing, is a good one, 
where is the indication that it is (still) of interest to industry?  (I believe 
that most protocols reaching Proposed these days already have some 
implementation experience; it's still not required, but is quite common, no?)
My own proposal was to have the second status level simply take note of industry 
acceptance.  It would be a deployment and use acknowledgement, rather than a 
technical assessment.  That's not meant to lobby for it, but rather give an 
example of a criterion for the second label that is different, cheap and 
meaningful.  By contrast, history has demonstrated that Draft is expensive and 
of insufficient community interest.  We might wish otherwise, but community 
rough consensus on the point is clear.  We should listen to it.
Since your proposal is to use the existing criteria for Draft as the second 
label, why should we expect it to be more popular than it has been?
It's clear that our 3-stage model is not working.  In my view, YAM is 
demonstrating that, frankly, it's not /going/ to.  The cost is too high and the 
benefit is too low. We ought to change that because, well, the current situation 
is embarrassing.
But in making the change, there should be a fairly strong basis for believing 
that the new model will be successful.
d/
--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net
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