Barry Leiba wrote:
John said...
Well, you know, the "Not a Standard But Might Be One Later" really are
requesting comments.
Yes, well, we all know that "RFC" has lost any real sense of its
expansion long ago. It certainly has done so in the eyes of most of
the world, for whom "RFC" means "Internet standard".
Correct. It really does not matter how *WE* call it, it is not going
to affect in any way what the world does with it as long as it has
the "published" status.
In many areas 90% of the implementors are outside of the IETF.
And if they get the task to implement and ship some protocol in
a product -- they will check the RFC index for a document describing
the protocol. And if there is exactly one version of a protocol
(and ultimately just one RFC document describing it), then they
going to use exactly that document for their implementation,
indepent of what label&boilerplate the IETF has slapped on the
front page. It really does not matter whether it reads
"Informational", "Proposed Standard", "Draft Standard" or "Standard".
They need to implement it, there is just one document describing it,
so really, what does this matter?
And frankly, large parts of the internet run with protocols and
specification that are "Informational" and "Proposed", and a
non-marginal part even runs on I-Ds.
The large majority out there just doesn't care how many document
maturity levels the IETF uses.
And the folks that prefer more numerous and easier I-D -> RFC transitions
are likely the "early adopters" which are frequently shipping products
based on I-Ds, and often the members of constituencies that would love
to completely lock down a specification as soon as they ship a product
based on it.
-Martin
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