Russ,
Thanks for reviving this topic. As the YAM working group has been finding,
trying to elevate even the most well-established and widely-used protocols to
Full standard remains problematic.
As your Acknowledgments section cites, your proposal nicely adds to the
considerable repertoire of variations that explore how to simplify things.
What is less clear is the model or theory or perspective that makes this
particular variation the one to prefer. Perhaps it does indeed offer the best
result, but what is the basis for deciding?
The fact that few protocols have sought Draft, nevermind Full, status is a
rather strong indication that the industry does not care about or need either.
Absent changes in the criteria for a label and/or the process for achieving a
second (or third) status level, what is going to motivate the community to
behave differently?
Interoperability testing used to be an extremely substantial demonstration of
industry interest and of meaningful learning. The resulting repair and
streamlining of specifications was signficant. If that's still happening, I've
been missing the reports about lessons learned, as well as indications that
significant protocol simplifications have resulted. While the premise of
streamlining specifications, based on interoperability testing, is a good one,
where is the indication that it is (still) of interest to industry? (I believe
that most protocols reaching Proposed these days already have some
implementation experience; it's still not required, but is quite common, no?)
My own proposal was to have the second status level simply take note of industry
acceptance. It would be a deployment and use acknowledgement, rather than a
technical assessment. That's not meant to lobby for it, but rather give an
example of a criterion for the second label that is different, cheap and
meaningful. By contrast, history has demonstrated that Draft is expensive and
of insufficient community interest. We might wish otherwise, but community
rough consensus on the point is clear. We should listen to it.
Since your proposal is to use the existing criteria for Draft as the second
label, why should we expect it to be more popular than it has been?
It's clear that our 3-stage model is not working. In my view, YAM is
demonstrating that, frankly, it's not /going/ to. The cost is too high and the
benefit is too low. We ought to change that because, well, the current situation
is embarrassing.
But in making the change, there should be a fairly strong basis for believing
that the new model will be successful.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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