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referencing RFCs (Was: Re: call for ideas: tail-heavy IETF process)

2013-05-06 01:46:21
Hannes,

The aim of this group is to find out how to reference IETF RFC (and standards 
from other organizations, like the W3C) since the European Commission seems 
to be unable to just reference standards beyond a small set of organizations 
(such as ETSI).

As you can imagine, the different types of RFCs are not that easy to 
understand for those who do not participate actively in the IETF. Getting 
others to understand the different streams, the various document types and 
different standards is already difficult and maybe there is room for 
simplification here.



This may be going to a side-track from the purposes of the original discussion, 
but thank you Hannes and Olaf working the EC to better accept our standards. It 
is very important work. And I understand it has not been easy at all. If I have 
understood correctly, there is a process to accept standards (or groups of 
standards) one at a time, and that we've wanted to push IPv6 as one such 
specification but despite two years and your heroic efforts, we still do not 
have acceptance.

#rant on

But I'd separate two different reasons for difficulties of this nature. First, 
there is some actual confusion. For instance the distinction between different 
types of RFCs is usually lost on most people outside the IETF. But I'd say it 
is often mixed (and might be so in this case) with other issues, such as desire 
to push other types of standards. I really don't know how out of touch you'd 
have to be to not understand that there are some agreed standards in the 
Internet. Things that are glaringly obvious to any user who stares at a screen. 
Like "http". Or IP, if you took even one course in the university about 
networking technology. Actively ignoring reality?

#rant off

Jari