Re: IANA considerations and expert review across different streams (was

Hi Robert,

Yes, I thought I was a bit off-topic.

FWIW, I've planted a link to this discussion ofhttps://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-wilde-registries/ athttps://github.com/dret/I-D/issues/24


#g
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On 27/01/2016 19:25, Robert Sparks wrote:

Hi Graham -

You raise some good points to discuss, but this particular document isn't the
place to capture the results of the conversation.

There have been a few other comments on ietf general related to the expert
review infrastructure in particular that would be good to pull into the
discussion. While your primary suggestion crosses streams, I think it would be
good to have the IESG staring at this closely too.

RjS


On 12/16/15 6:00 PM, Graham Klyne wrote:

On 16/12/2015 17:47, IAB Executive Administrative Manager wrote:

This is an announcement of an IETF-wide Call for Comment on
draft-iab-rfc5741bis-01.

The document is being considered for publication as an Informational RFC
within the IAB stream, and is available for inspection here:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-rfc5741bis/

The Call for Comment will last until 2016-01-13. Please send comments to
iab(_at_)iab(_dot_)org.


Abstract

    RFC documents contain a number of fixed elements such as the title
    page header, standard boilerplates and copyright/IPR statements.
    This document describes them and introduces some updates to reflect
    current usage and requirements of RFC publication.  In particular,
    this updated structure is intended to communicate clearly the source
    of RFC creation and review.  This document obsoletes RFC 5741, moving
    detailed content to an IAB web page and preparing for more flexible
    output formats.


I welcome this attempt to clarify the status of RFCs that are published by
differing routes.  The point of my comment here is to ask if it might be
appropriate to extend the clarification provided to include the effect of IANA
considerations actions in RFCs from various streams (that request
registrations that are commonly associated with standards actions).

My comments here derive from reflection of my role as designated IANA reviewer
for URI-scheme and message header field name registries, administered under
guidance of [RFC7595] and [RFC3864] respectively.

Both the IANA URI scheme registry [1] and the message header registry [2] have
allowance for *provisional* and *permanent* registrations, with the intent
that provisional registrations are permitted with low overhead so that useful
information about work in progress is easily made available at a well-known
location, and permanent registrations are subject to a degree of review and
practice that developers should feel comfortable to use them in their
implementation of Internet-facing applications.

There have been a small number of cases in which an ISE RFC publication has
requested a permanent registration (where the small number here is 2 or 3).

In at least one case, I felt that the lack of IETF review and/or widespread
implementation meant that permanent registration was not appropriate, but the
specifics of the guiding RFC did not make this an obviously correct decision,
and I felt I needed to request wider support for my view.

In at least one other case, despite the lack of formal review, I felt the
process followed, discussion that had taken place and apparent scope of
implementation meant that request for permanent registration was appropriate,
but again I felt the need to solicit support for this view.

My general concern here is that the status of IANA actions in ISE stream
publications is sometimes unclear, and use of the ISE track for RFC
publication might be used as an end run-around the expected review process
that is commonly associated with some registrations.  In hindsight, [RFC3864]
(section 2.1) should explicitly indicate IETF-stream informational RFC
publication, but at the time this was written, IIRC, independent publications
were still usually last-called in the IETF.

You might reasonably say that the purpose of expert review is to deal with
edge cases like the ones I mention, and I'm OK with that.  But I'm also aware
that it is important for decisions and processes to be as transparent as
possible:  if review decisions can appear to be arbitrary or unexpected then
registrations may be discouraged and the purpose of the registries undermined.

Thanks.

#g
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[1] http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/uri-schemes.xhtml

[2] http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/message-headers.xhtml

[RFC7595] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7595

[RFC3864] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3864

Re: IANA considerations and expert review across different streams (was Re: [IAB] Call for comment: <draft-iab-rfc5741bis-01> (On RFC Streams, Headers, and Boilerplates))