I fail to find any of the justifications in RFC 4846 all that persuasive.
Choosing a few examples:
...
Nowadays, vendors have web sites that describe their protocols.
These are frequent lines of argumentation against publishing anything other than
formal IETF documents. What they represent is a misunderstanding of the
established role of the RFC series. Publishing formal IETF documents is only
part of the benefit provided to the community for the last 40 years.
Take a look back over that record. Its structure and publication arc describe a
culture, not just a set of technologies.
A healthy community culture is difficult to engineer and fragile to maintain.
Typically, it's creation is an unintended consequence and it is destroyed
similarly. Mess with it not just at your own peril, but at the peril of that
community.
There is no crisis or even problem that is creating different circumstances than
we have had over the last 40 years. We have flourished, not just survived, with
this horribly flawed publishing model. Note, for example, that alternative
publishing might be more convenient now, but it is not new. In other words, it
ain't broke, so let's stop calling for repair.
We would spend our time better by focusing on creating our own specifications
more efficiently and with better and quicker community uptake. Worrying about
non-IETF Informational IETFs distracts from that.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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