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

2010-06-20 07:01:36
On 20/Jun/10 11:53, SM wrote:
The reader will note that neither implementation nor operational
experience is required. In practice, the IESG does "require
implementation and/or operational experience prior to granting Proposed
Standard status". Implementors do not treat Proposed Standards as
immature specifications.

It seems to me that abolishing the third level is possible, now, because the handling of I-Ds has been enhanced. IMHO, it is an advantage to require some experience before giving an I-D the rank of Proposed Standard. Because I-Ds can change more rapidly and informally than an official standardization round, the early adoption phase can be much more agile that way.

However, some I-Ds become RFCs unexpectedly soon, and may ship untested prototypes. If it is agreed that this is rather a shift of maturity levels than simply the abolishment of the last, then some of the current criteria for Draft Standard should be formally shifted to Proposed Standard accordingly.

This proposal removes Draft Standard and Internet Standard and replaces
it with Interoperable Standard. I won't quibble over the choice of the
name yet.

If there are two levels and the first one is "Proposed Standard", then the other one ought to be "Accepted Standard", "Official Standard", or something that truly reflects such change (which usually does not affect its interoperability or security, as Yaron said.)

"Accepted Standard" would call for a somewhat better feedback from the community, though.

"In several situations, a Standard is obsoleted by a Proposed Standard"

A Standard is not obsoleted by a Proposed Standard. A RFC with a status
of Internet Standard can be obsoleted by a RFC at Proposed Standard.

In some cases, it should be possible to replace an RFC with a reviewed version, at the same maturity level. For example, the attention that successive SMTP documents have to pay to source routing decreases over time. There is no reason why a new RFC aimed at reviewing a mature spec would need to reduce its maturity level, if it accomplishes the current requirements for third level. I hope this point will be made clearer.

JM2C
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