John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> That case is clear but consider two others (about which I'm obviously
> sensitive) and tell me where they fit:
> (i) RFC 1425 adds a command and significant logic to RFC 821. RFC 821
> had no provision for that sort of change. In 1993, RFC 1425 was not
> listed as updating 821; today it probably would be. However it clearly
> revises 821 somewhat even though it does not in any way replace it. At
> the time implementations of 1425 started to appear, we hoped that no
Today, we'd want to collect all of these into a STD set.
That we don't have an equivalent for documents at PS is a problem that NEWTRK
tried to deal with. Maybe we are ready for doing that.
> (ii) Moving on, we have RFC 5321 which succeeded (sic) RFC 2821, which
> revised and replaced, not only 821 and 1869 (the replacement for 1425
> once removed) but RFC 974. Now 5321 is clearly a "better document
> than" 2821, but its relationship to the earlier specs is a bit unclear.
> FWIW, there has been an extended discussion on another list initiated
> by someone who has insisted that it is perfectly reasonable to
> implement RFC 821 today because, while it is listed as being obsoleted
> by 2821, is still an Internet Standard (as part of STD0010). The other
Sigh... by someone who should know better?
I mean, your timemachine had better implement RFC821.
> At a very minimum, the above suggests to me that we have made rather a
> mess that mere juggling with terminology is not going to fix unless we
> have enough terminology categories to deal with some rather odds cases
> or combinations of them.
Agreed... which is why I agree with you that every document needs to have a
clear status page. Perhaps this recently announced raproachment between the
IETF LLC and the RPC staff will let us make better progress on fixing this.
I hope that Roman will start the BOF/WG to revise 2026, detail experimental,
etc. soon. That was the alldispatch result.
--
Michael Richardson <mcr+IETF@xxxxxxxxxxxx> . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide
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