On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 11:54:26 -0500 John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > Except for the fact that the material being cited contains the > specifics of license and IPR releases, and promises to abide by > certain rules, by the authors. Authors can't reasonably be > asked to agree to something that might be published under the > BCP number in the indefinite future, so you are either stuck > with a document (RFC) number or a BCP as of a specific date, > which amounts to the same thing and is harder to track down. > I'll let Jorge correct me if I'm wrong, but referencing by <number,date> is the norm in the legal world, since statutes do get amended without necessarily being renumbered. I do agree we want to make it easy for non-lawyers. I've suggested a date-stamped archive of each version of each such document, for precisely that reason. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf