On Feb 19, 2015, at 5:16 PM, Michael Richardson
<mcr+ietf(_at_)sandelman(_dot_)ca> wrote:
I'm very concerned about this part:
A key point in the protocol development process was the iteration the
working group did between protocol updates, and implementations and
testing. Certain draft protocol versions were labelled by the working group
as "implementation drafts", and the participants -- many web browser and
web server providers -- updated their implementations and tested out the
protocol changes. Most of the interim meetings included part of a day spent
on hands-on interoperability testing and discussion. The result is a
thoroughly validated protocol that has been shown to interoperate and that
meets the needs of many major stakeholders.
It sure seems to me like those "implementation drafts" are what used to be
called proposed standards.
Proposed standards also have to go through working group last call, AD review,
IETF last call, IESG review, SecDir review, GenArt review, a six-week waiting
period in the RFC editor’s queue, and AUTH48. I don’t think we can afford to do
that for a single document every 4-6 months, like httpbis did for HTTP/2.
What I see is a new step in the standardization process, along with a view
that the step after internet-draft seems to include proven interoperability.
Running code has always been part of the deal, at least as something we would
like to have. Besides, the process continued even when some implementations did
not interoperate.
I propose that this document skip PS, and go straight to Internet Standard to
accurately reflect the status of this document.
There is currently pretty close to zero deployment in the real world. A bunch
of lab implementations that managed to interoperate in a bake-off is not an
indication of something ready for Internet Standard. But don’t you agree that
publishing a document with the bunch of lab implementations is better than
publishing it without them?
Yoav