On 4/26/13, Fred Baker <fred(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:
In 2013, I personally would accomplish this a little differently, however. A
section in an internet draft, which gets frozen when the draft is published,
is perhaps useful for the working group and IESG review processes. On the
other hand, it requires implementers to communicate with the draft author
and the draft author to update the draft in response to their input, which
can be a logistical mess. It ceases being useful once the draft is
published.
I think still useful as long it is documented with dates of
implementations, the reader in future will know about this from
reading the section, like we have historical documents, this can be a
historical section, both are used by community. Implementing codes is
the real use of an IETF standard/document.
If a new implementation is done, there is no report. If and old
one is abandoned, nobody knows. It is dated information, potentially true at
a point in time but largely irrelevant two minutes later.
It is the lack of authors to report such important issues into IETF
system. Why we have historical and informational RFCs, maybe we need
some volunteers to focus on things that may be missing
I would think we want something associated with the data tracker page -
another web page, perhaps implemented as a wiki - that enables an
implementer to identify himself and indicate the current status of the
implementation. Ideally, that might be coupled with a ticket system in which
issues are raised and closed, and comments are discussed. Ideally, this
would continue into the life of an RFC, with implementations being
identified ("The protocol in RFC 12345 is implemented in Andy Systems
releases 22.70 and later") and associated with errata ("but we really wish
that the parameter FOO had been specified").
This is great idea, I support, but does not replace documentations, I
think the status section is documenting complished work for use by
community, and tracker is referencing IETF-work for use by
participants in future work in progress.
AB