--On Thursday, September 03, 2009 12:48 +0300 Jari Arkko
<jari.arkko@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> John,
>
>> I suggest that it is not so much a conflict with the ongoing
>> work of an IETF WG, but a flat technical error.
>
> And I would in general agree with you, but in this case the
> stuff was already deployed very widely, and the purpose of the
> publication was to document existing practice. I agreed that
> the draft had to be published as it was. Of course, a clean
> design would have been different, but what do you do?
It is hard to argue against an accurate description of deployed
existing practice, even if it is conflicting or otherwise
terrible. I think that the process should have caught the
terminology discrepancy and that the authors should have been
required to describe it, and the problems it could cause, very
carefully.
Again, I think we are fairly closely aligned about the
principle here. I just think that "notes" -- especially
non-specific ones that are, or appear to be, boilerplate-- are
rarely a desirable solution and that authors should be forced
into careful description of issues and/or critical reviews of
differences as a better alternative. The job of doing the
"forcing" is that of the RFC Editor/ ISE, not the IESG, but I'd
be very concerned about any ISE who didn't take the
responsibility for ensuring that documents are not confusing wrt
IETF (and other identifiable) work were not clarified to the
point that a reader would have no trouble telling from context
was was going on.
It may amuse you to know that I've been pushing the theme that
independent submissions that even vaguely overlap with IETF work
should both show an awareness of that situation and include
critical reviews of the differences for many years, enough years
to have repeatedly made the comment to the previous RFC Editor
as well as the current one (and probably persistently enough to
occasionally irritate both). I've also suggested from time to
time that, if someone can read an independent submission
(non-April-1) RFC that overlaps with IETF work with reasonable
care and not emerge with a clear understanding of the
relationship, the RFC Editor has not done their job. I'm sort
of an extremist on the topic, even though the pragmatics of
getting useful documents posted have often caused me to not get
exactly what I've asked for. But, again, I see the primary
responsibility for making sure that Independent submission
documents are clear about what they are lies
with the authors and RFC Editor(ISE), that the considerable
improvements in Headers and Boilerplates will play a major role
in helping with that, and that qualifying "notes", regardless of
source, are a very poor choice, to be used cautiously,
selectively, with careful relationship to context, and only if
the issues cannot be resolved in any other way.
john
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