I am the last person to propose making changes to IETF procedures to suit RMS better.
The reason to make changes is to increase influence.
Experimental evidence (take any recent election you choose) strongly suggests that the human logical reasoning system has the Post hoc ergo propter hoc facilicy wired in. Basically the brain is a big, mushy association engine. If two events happen together frequently enough, an expectation is formed that one will lead to another. Contrawise, the causal relationship is weakened each time a contrary example is seen.
At the moment the procedures ensure that there is almost no visible correlation between the success of a protocol and progress in IETF process.
From: Stephan Wenger [mailto:stewe@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tue 3/10/2009 9:40 AM
To: Hallam-Baker, Phillip; Steven M. Bellovin
Cc: SM; rms@xxxxxxx; ietf@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Consensus Call for draft-housley-tls-authz
Sent: Tue 3/10/2009 9:40 AM
To: Hallam-Baker, Phillip; Steven M. Bellovin
Cc: SM; rms@xxxxxxx; ietf@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Consensus Call for draft-housley-tls-authz
Please note that I didn’t make a proposal. I can live quite well with a misalignment of IETF terminology and reality as perceived outside the IETF. So can the industry, I think. What I was commenting on is that it does not make sense to me to re-iterate the mantra of “Experimental RFCs not being standards”, when there is ample evidence that a large percentage of the outside world views this differently.
It seems to take only the intervention one of the (security / congestion control / anti-patent / ...) communities of the IETF to move a document intended for standard’s track to the, arguably, second-class RFC status known as “Experimental”. Again, that’s not a problem for me, for the reason stated above.
Stephan
On 3/9/09 9:38 PM, "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It seems to take only the intervention one of the (security / congestion control / anti-patent / ...) communities of the IETF to move a document intended for standard’s track to the, arguably, second-class RFC status known as “Experimental”. Again, that’s not a problem for me, for the reason stated above.
Stephan
On 3/9/09 9:38 PM, "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When British Leyland shut down the assembly line for the Triumph TR7 they found a note that said, 'Your proposal to prime and paint the TR7 bodyshells before moving them a hundred miles in open rail cars to the assembly plant has been made before. If only stopping rust was so simple'.
The fact that a proposal has been made before and ignored does not diminish its value.
How frequently does a sensible proposal have to be made to receive a susbstantive response?
From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx on behalf of Steven M. Bellovin
Sent: Mon 3/9/2009 6:40 PM
To: Stephan Wenger
Cc: SM; rms@xxxxxxx; ietf@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Consensus Call for draft-housley-tls-authz
On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:35:31 -0700
Stephan Wenger <stewe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The IETF might view it this way. Large parts of the
> (standardization) world does not. One example in my field of work is
> FLUTE, and the surrounding infrastructure of frameworks and FEC
> codes. To the best of my recollection, these specifications were
> originally issued as Experimental RFCs, for reasons of congestion
> control worries. (They are also heavily encumbered, but that was not
> really an issue according to my recollection.) The Experimental
> status did not stop 3GPP and other SDOs to normatively reference
> them, and treat them just like any other IETF RFC. Note that 3GPP
> could NOT do that with a journal publication... I could name more
> examples, both when it comes to referencing SDOs and referenced RFC
> types (including normative references to at least Historic, Obsolete,
> Informational).
This is, I think, the second- or third-most-common topic on the IETF
list: should we rename the document series to prevent that... (#1 is
non-ASCII formats for RFCs; #2 -- by volume of postings, rather than
frequency of discussion -- might be IPR.)
Other than giving up the RFC label for Experimental documents, it's
hard to see what the IETF can do.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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