Brian E Carpenter <brc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > I don't see any discussion of the RFC Editor retaining null IANA
> > sections in RFC2434bis, which is good. It is a completely silly idea. An
> > RFC should contain useful, long-lasting information. The fact that a
> > particular document didn't require IANA action is not useful unless it
> > is surprising, and if it is surprising, the section should not be null.
> I respectfully disagree. I think that someone implementing or deploying a
> given specification may well wonder whether any IANA-assigned values
> are relevant, and the absence of a null section in an RFC doesn't help
> with that.
All implementation-necessary constants should be in the RFC. That is a
given. But they typically already will be even if the IANA
considerations is effectively:
This document makes no new IANA registrations.
(i.e., when publishing an revised/updated Proposed Standard)
I'm somewhat torn on how much to leave in the final RFC, especially
if a statement (like the above) seems to contain little information.
But from experience, I'll point out that anyone that has ever tried to
reconstruct the history for a particular registry by looking at RFCs
knows this can be extremely challenging. Including explicit notes that
say seemingly little can speed up this process.
Unfortunately, even with good IANA web pages, its sometimes necessary
to go back through the RFC trail to figure out what is really going
on.
And, at the end of the day, RFCs are our archival history. So that is
the logical place to be archiving such things. (We don't currently
have any other way.)
Thomas
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