On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 09:13:06AM -0700, The IESG wrote:
The IESG has received a request from an individual submitter to consider
the following document:
- 'Reducing the Standards Track to Two Maturity Levels'
<draft-housley-two-maturity-levels-06.txt> as a BCP
The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
final comments on this action.
Dear colleagues,
I have read the document. I have some comments. Some of these I have
said before, but since there's a last call I thought I should state my
view for the record.
First, I don't oppose publishing the draft as an RFC. Neither do I
support it. I am indifferent, because I don't believe it will make a
great deal of difference.
Second, the document appears to claim in section 2.1 that the removal
of three tiers is intened to remove the impediments to publication of
RFCs at PS. I think this result would be a good thing, but I see no
reason to believe that it will happen. It seems to me to be at least
as likely that IESG members will over time regard PS as _de facto_
standards, because the draft requires wide deployment of such RFCs in
order to move a protocol to Internet Standard. This could as easily
reinforce the current situation as to relieve it.
Third, the draft appears to be arguing that advancement is somewhat
more likely under the revised definitions. While it would be
interesting if this happened, my experience as co-chair of DNSEXT
makes me dubious. In that role, I have observed that things don't get
moved along the standards track because there is no incentive whatever
to do so. Things are widely deployed already as PS. Once they have
been widely deployed, there is great resistance to change. So in
effect, any advancement is a housekeeping operation in which a
document we've all known as "RFC NNNN" comes to be called "RFC MMMM",
(and sometimes, minor changes are introduced in the text that turn
into great points of contention because of the potential for
incompatibility). Nothing about this draft changes that state of
affairs; instead, it is reinforced by the requirement of wide
deployment.
Fourth, the decision to permit downward normative references from IS
to PS strikes me as a little strange. It means that in order really
to evaluate the maturity of a given RFC, you will need also to
evaluate the maturity of all the RFCs it refers to.
That said, the draft has the noble qualities that it is clear and to
the point. I like the solution to the problem of the obsolete
definition DS laid out in section 5.
Best regards,
Andrew
--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs(_at_)shinkuro(_dot_)com
Shinkuro, Inc.
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