Joe Touch wrote:
. . .
> Yes. The history here is the reason why the drafts are ephemeral and not
> archived - to encourage the exchange of incomplete ideas. The success of
> this history is what is being compromised.
>
> Archiving them creates an environment where drafts and updates will be
> stalled, with the response "well, since this is archival, we'd better
> get it a little more complete". Given how long it takes for even the
> active drafts to make it to RFC with such discussion, the chilling
> effect on the creation of RFCs (at least by people who _are_ careful,
> who you want to encourage) may grind things to a halt.
Well, if the community collectively decided that they didn't want to
remember its history, that would be fine but I mentioned this because I
thought that when we last went through this it was the consensus that
remembering would be a "Good Thing" (to quote a well know flowing
arranging allegedly insider trader.. ;-) and I saw statements that an
archive was coming "soon". This may have been in out-of-band
communications, not the list but in any event as Graham has pointed out,
ISOC is doing this now. Good stuff...
FWIW, I personally don't buy the "it will have a chilling effect on
discussion" arguement, given that the email lists are archived here,
there and everywhere and now Google has all the old Usenet postings up.
Have you actually gone to Google and checked out the Usenet archives?
It's amazing what's out there.
So why not RFC Drafts? I've already had cause a couple of times to help
research a couple of prior art claims and I was amazed to find out what
was still out there. It was just hard to track down. I don't think we do
ourselves any favours by forcing folks into this "attic cleaning" mode.
We might as well put it all out as a tool for research, because it's not
just about patent claims. It's actually useful to trace out the
development process so you can understand it, and make it work better.
Sort of a first derivative of research, to do research about research I
guess...
- peterd
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Peter Deutsch pdeutsch@gydig.com
Gydig Software
That's it for now. Remember to read chapter 11 on the
implications of quantum mechanic theory for time travel
and be prepared to have been here last week to discuss.
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