--On Monday, September 12, 2011 09:34 -0600 Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 8/29/11 3:36 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote: >> After staring at >> http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?eid=499 for long >> enough, I finally decided to submit an I-D that is intended to >> obsolete RFC 2119. I hope that I've been able to update and >> clarify the text in a way that is respectful of the original. >> Feedback is welcome. >> >> http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-saintandre-2119bis-01.txt > > Based on the feedback received, I do not plan to pursue > further work on that Internet-Draft. However, given that the > IETF Secretariat and the RFC Editor team already accept > documents that include "NOT RECOMMENDED" in the RFC 2119 > boilerplate, does anyone see harm in verifying the > aforementioned erratum? Sigh. Sorry to make this more complicated but, IMO, the error in 2119 and, to some extent, recent practice, is in permitting "RECOMMENDED" as a synonym for "SHOULD", not in failing to permit its opposite. If one goes back to 2026, there is a fairly clear separation between Technical Specifications" and interoperability requirements (terminology for which appears in 2119) and the "Requirement levels" and conformance requirements of Applicability Statements. Those levels, as specified in Section 3.3 of RFC 2026, are "Required", "Recommended", "Elective", "Limited Use", and "Not Recommended". According to 2026, those requirement levels in AS documents apply to entire TSs but I think we have sometimes relaxed that a bit into statements about features within a TS. If AS requirement level statements apply only to full TS specifications, the use for "RECOMMENDED" as a statement about interoperability requirements, synonymous with "SHOULD" is merely somewhat confusing. If we are going to sometimes have ASs that make statements at the feature level, then it is disastrously so because the same term has an interoperability meaning in one context, a conformance meaning in another, and there may be no reliable way to deduce the difference. To provide an additional focus for this, I've just filed proposed erratum 2969 (http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=2119&eid=2969) that reflects the comments above. You now have a choice about which one to approve :-) regards, john _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf