Ned,
On Apr 25, 2012, at 7:31 PM, Ned Freed wrote:
I see no value in deallocating code point spaces
It depends on the size of the space.
Why?
Because if you deallocate and reallocate it, there can be conflicts. Perhaps
you haven't noticed, but a lot of times people continue to use stuff that
IETF
considers to be bad ideas, including but not limited to things we called
experiments at some point.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but no one was suggesting deallocating and
reallocating anything that was in use. Or do you have a different
interpretation of "if appropriate"?
How can you possibly determine with any degree of reliability if something you
know deployed to some extent is still in use or not? The Internet is a big
place.
Again, the *only* case where it makes sense to deallocate is if the space is
small. In such cases the rewards outweigh the risks.
And getting rid of information that people may need to get things to
interoperate seems to, you know, kinda go against some of our core
principles.
Sorry, where did anyone suggest getting rid of any "information that people
may need to get things to interoperate" again? Or do you interpret moving a
XML page from a web server into an informational RFC to be "getting rid" of
information?
Yes I most certainly did, because that what it amounts to. The instant you move
the information to a new place and break the old pointers to it, you have
effectively gotten rid of it.
I'll admit I find this thread bordering on the surreal with some fascinating
kneejerk reactions.
What's surreal is your belief that the sorts of actions you're proposing have
no consequences.
As far as I can tell, the only thing that was proposed was something to
"encourage documentation of the conclusion of experiments" and "if
appropriate,
deprecate any IANA code points allocated for the experiment".
Yes, the original statement said deprecate, and I had no problem with it. But
this quickly changed to people saying that code points need to be deallocated,
which is what I was responding to. Here's a direct quote from an early message
on this thread:
From my experience at IANA, trying to figure out who to contact to remove a
code point gets harder the longer the code points are not being used. Unless
the code space is unlimited, I'd argue that you want to deallocate as soon as
an experiment is over.
"remove" and "deallocate". Not "deprecate". And no code space is unlimited. Oh,
and you're the one who wrote this.
Both of these seem like good things to me. This has somehow been translated
into variously:
a) a declaration about how research is done
b) deletion and/or reallocation of "code point spaces" that people are using
c) killing off successful protocols because they're documented in
experimental not standards track rfcs
d) violating "our core principles"
e) process for the sake of process
f) IANA being a control point for the Internet
g) etc.
Did I miss a follow-up message from the Inherently Evil Steering Group that
proposed these sorts of things?
Did I ever say that I was repsonding to the original IESG statement? No, I
don't think I ever said that.
Anyway, I've made my point, and as PHB said, you've now devolved to stupid
tricks to bolster your argument. I'm done.
Ned