I have a growing feeling that part of the problem here is that many Working Groups are in effect maintenance activities. The three tier PROPOSED-DRAFT-STANDARD scheme has many accepted flaws, not least the fact that grandfathered specs aside practically nothing ever makes the final step from DRAFT to STANDARD. I think that a bigger problem may well be the fact that RFC 822 is officially THE standard while for all meaningful purposes the real standard is RFC 2822. I think that one of the flaws in the scheme is that the original proposal was designed for specs like IPv4/TCP etc which are effectively fixed for all time on deployment. Most specs are not like that, continuous maintenance is required. If the spec does not require any maintenance it probably indicates that it should probably be shuffled off to HISTORIC. I would like to see a two tier scheme for standards (i.e. eliminate the illogical and misleading status 'DRAFT') but on the understanding that standards require periodic review. By periodic I mean that there should be fixed windows that are scheduled in advance when the standard will be reviewed. There would be a fixed interval in which defect reports could be submitted. One of the topics of the general session for each area would be a report on the defect reports and discussion of whether a new revision WG was required. It might be easier to close WGs down if this was not quite so final. Allowing a 'fast track' for defect reports would encourage proposers to come to the IETF with complete proposals with a substantial degree of consensus in the user and developer communities. If the defect report is justified the need should be widely felt, if as is likely the report is describing existing field practice addressing that need there should not be a need for substantial discussion. In some cases it would be appropriate to reactivate the working group concerned, in others a mini-WG might address multiple protocols. The need is most common in the security area where crypto practices need to be revised every 5 years or so. An area wide activity describing use of SHA-256 would be an example.
Attachment:
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
_______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf