A few quick observations...
--On Friday, October 29, 2010 13:20 -0700 SM <sm(_at_)resistor(_dot_)net>
wrote:
...
While my instinct is that RFC publication would be desirable,
if that didn't seem workable we could move the idea a bit
closer to the "Snapshot" idea by posting the document in the
I-D series and giving it a gold star.
It would be difficult to get buy-in if the document is not
published as a RFC.
If that is true --and it may be-- it would indicate that not
even we can keep track of the difference between "RFC" and
"Standard". If that were to be the case, discussion of maturity
levels is basically a waste of time.
Instead of eliminating Proposed
Standard, how about allowing the working group output document
to be
published as Proposed Standard? The approval could be done
within the working group only but that might results in
documents of questionable quality. If we take your idea of
...
(v) Document goes into "do or die" track
I think there are other issues with your outline, but the key
one is that it would really, really, depend on "do or die"
working. If it didn't, the IETF would rapidly acquire a
reputation for producing garbage as Standards, and that would
be, IMO, really bad.
But the odds are against "do or die". We've had that provision
(automatic moves to Historic for Proposed (or Draft) Standards
that are not advanced within a set period) for a very long time.
Unlike the Proposed Standard criteria, which have gradually
evolved to become more and more burdensome in practice, we have
_never_ followed that rule as written and only once (the
"de-cruft" spinoff from the NEWTRK WG) make a serious attempt to
clean out documents no one cared about any more.
I also suggest that the odds are against us, if only because the
IESG will always have higher priorities than reviewing the
status of documents no one cares about any more (either because
they didn't get traction or because they got so much traction
that they represent established practice that no one has
motivation to update them). In addition, I'm cynical enough to
believe that IESG members would hesitate to kill off documents
that have a few supporters who might put a lot of effort into
complaining to the Nomcom... at least without strong documented
evidence of community support.
Note that we have also made killing things hard: the idea that
it takes putting together and publishing an RFC with details,
justification, and all of the usual sections and boilerplate to
move another RFC to Historic is a post-2026 innovation. I think
it was caused by the above issues with the IESG deprecating
things because it was obviously the Right Thing to Do. But,
regardless of the causes, it means a lot of motivation is needed
to kill (or deprecate) something rather than letting it
languish. IMO, if we wanted "do or die", we'd have to change
that culture too.
...
best,
john
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