On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 5:06 PM, Michael StJohns
<mstjohns(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net>
wrote:
As far as I understand, Murray is proposing "no change in effective
behavior" in the first pass, so whether or not we manage to get an RFC
through before the next nomcom or not, the publication of a simply updated
3777 is really nothing more than clean up without any change in effect to
the current Nomcom, nor in the behavior of any follow-on Nomcom.
Correct, that's the intent.
Given that there's a real cost (can you say Last Call?) to the community
as a whole for each and every RFC action, I'm underwhelmed at the idea of
opening up 3777 without making a commitment to actually address its warts.
On the other hand, isn't the cost of an IETF Last Call on what amounts to
consolidation of already-approved documents, and nothing else, a fair bit
less than the real cost of a typical IETF Last Call on new, updated, or
otherwise not-yet-approved work? Given the no changes constraint, the Last
Call reviewers only need to confirm that the consolidation was done
correctly and the result is still understandable. There's nothing new to
debate here.
That's a long winded way of saying no. If there were a pressing need for
the current Nomcom, I'd suggest they use the "operational discretion"
portion of the document. If there were a well understood set of changes
that have been incorporated in practice, but not in documentation, I
*might* say yes. Neither of these appear to apply - hence, "No".
I'm on the current NomCom (and was on the last one too), and I think it
would be reasonable for me to say that both of them sure thought it would
be nice to have had this work done ahead of time. I wouldn't say it's a
pressing need, but if one NomCom after the next seems to have the same
sentiment, then it's probably work that's due or even past due.
To be blunt, we're already... *sigh* splitting nits about the meaning of
certain sections, words, word combinations, etc. I'd really rather not go
through that more than once every 5 years or so.
By that reasoning, it's time, since RFC3777 is more than ten years old and
all but one of the applied updates are at least five years old. I suggest
that doing this first will make it easier to do the follow-on work you're
suggesting, especially since a diff to this document (when published), and
thus to the true current practice, will be very easy to generate.
-MSK