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

2010-06-21 08:43:23
Dave:

The questions that you raise will be discussed for 30 minutes at the
front of the Wednesday plenary at IETF 78.  The next step is to find out
what the community thinks about these choices.  I fully expect there to
be changes to the draft after that discussion.

As you say, we really want to see improvement, not just change.

Russ

On 6/20/2010 2:10 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

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/
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