>>>>> "John" == John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> writes: John> --On Tuesday, 06 September, 2005 15:14 -0400 Sam Hartman John> <hartmans-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: >> John, what does it mean to put a registry document on the >> standards track? In particular, how do you get multiple >> implementations of a registry? John> One is reminded of the story of Eeyore's birthday party. John> Registering things --putting them into a registry so that John> they can be retrieved and examined using whatever key was John> used to put them there-- is always easy and, as you point John> out, untestable. But it is also almost never the point: the John> point is whether the right information is being placed in John> the registry to support the relevant applications and John> whether those applications can use the information in a way John> that promotes interoperability. John> With regard to that driving issue, it is certainly possible John> to have multiple implementations of matching rules. It is John> certainly possible to examine, in practice, different uses John> of the tagging system to determine whether its mechanisms John> are sufficient and, if sufficient, whether they meet some John> "minimum necessary" criteria or represent serious overkill John> and/or redundancy. It is possible to do many things. I was hoping that I could get you to make a concrete proposal for how you see this document advancing if we put it on the standards track. Personally I think your comments are valuable even if you don't make such a proposal,but I think they would be more valuable if you or someone holding the same position would make it very clear what it would mean for this document to be on the standards track. My question is not motivated by a lack of imagination about what that could mean but rather all too many options I can think of. Here are some questions it seems like the IETF community would need to answer in order to implement your proposed categorization: 1) What happens to the existing registry with these documents on the standards track but not BCPs? 2) How do we advance these documents on the standards track? In addition, it might be advisable for the IETF community to consider the question of what happens if we find this is not the right approach; that question is not required to implement your proposed reclassification but it seems advisable to consider. Let me throw something out to answer the questions I posed. We could keep the existing 3066 registry as the BCP registry and create a new registry for these documents. We could advance these documents when any single using protocol advances. Presumably that would mean that these documents could not advance until some protocol that normatively references them advances; that's probably OK. Clearly these are not the only answers to the questions I posed--I'm not even sure if they are good answers. They are presented only to illustrate that it is possible to answer the questions without huge effort. That in turn suggests to me at least that I'm not establishing an unreasonable requirement by asking the questions be answered. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf