Hi -
(top-posting)
I think John and I are in close to violent agreement.
The devil being in the details, the question is whether
any change is needed to current boilerplate / process /
conventions (e.g. referencing specific versions of I-Ds,
just as in referencing specific versions of standards or
other documents when necessary) or whether this can be left
to the good judgement of authors / editors / working groups.
I'm inclined toward the latter, as what we have seems to
already work well enough.
Randy
On 2024-03-25 9:10 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
--On Monday, March 25, 2024 15:53 -0700 Randy Presuhn
<randy_presuhn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi -
On 2024-03-25 3:23 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
--On Monday, March 25, 2024 14:02 -0700 Randy Presuhn
<randy_presuhn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi -
On 2024-03-25 1:51 PM, S Moonesamy wrote:
Hi Randy,
At 01:19 PM 25-03-2024, Randy Presuhn wrote:
What is the conflict you see? The text you cited seems to
me to present no conflict. A posted Internet-Draft
certainly seems to fit within the realm of "a document
published outside of the RFC path, including informal
documentation."
This takes the discussion to what Mike pointed out at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/FqmdAQY_C7jOGh_K
V- HkC5MP7Xs
I also mentioned "formal public specification". If I am
not mistaken, that would include standards from other
bodies or national standards for which a code point is
required.
If it's ok to cite an I-D as "work in progress," how is that
different from "informal documentation" in any meaningful
way?
If it is being used as part of the definition for an entry in
an IANA registry, that makes it "reference material", not
just a work in progress. In addition, if it were actually a
work in progress, that would make it unsuitable for part of
the definition for a registry entry because it would be an odd
indeed to have a registration of a moving target rather than a
stable definition.
I think that may be just a different way to express Mike's
concern.
The same criticisms might be leveled against any sort of
"informal
documentation." The question really needs to be whether the
document has sufficient information to support the
registration -
and that, in turn, depends on the uses envisioned for that
registry
at the time it was carved out, not every possible tweak that
the
document might subsequently experience. I think concerns about
stability are well-founded, but obsessing about them opens a
massive
can of worms. Think back to the various incarnations of ASN.1
since
the 1980s, or even the question of what "SNMP" has meant at
various
points in time.
Randy,
Yes, but...
(1) Your examples actually support my concerns. If I am using
"ASN.1" or "SNMP" in a context where the incarnation makes a
difference, good practice is to attach a note or citation of
some sort that tells the reader what I'm talking about. I don't
just leave that to the reader's imagination. For the I-D case,
I'd be far less concerned about a reference in an IANA registry
to draft-ietf-foo-bar-13 and an associated date than to
draft-ietf-foo-bar. The former is a specific reference; the
latter a moving target with no information about which version
is being referred to and no controls over the changes that might
be made (even fewer controls than applied to SNMP or ASN.1).
(2) Others have pointed this out, but, if we are going to
reference an I-D (even with a version number), we assume some
obligation to be sure that document is available for the very
long term. If someone references some other sort of informal
document, they should take responsibility for ensuring its
availability. If they fail and the document disappears, that
would be unfortunate, but it seems to me that, for I-Ds and and
an IETF-maintained repository, we have at least a moral
responsibility to keep documents that are referenced as
normative around and, in the process, to set a good example.
(3) And, while it is not strictly necessary (and I agree with
your comment about obsessing over details of stability), we may
be in need of some text that distinguishes between I-Ds of a
given name (independent of a sequence number) as being a
collection that together constitute a "work in progress" and any
particular numbered draft, which is a static snapshot of that
evolving work but that does not, itself, evolve or change. In a
way, that may make draft-ietf-foo-bar-13 a more stable
reference, with less hair-splitting, than some current
discussions propose to make RFCs.
john
