I'm speaking as an individual, albeit an individual who helped with the
decrufting effort in NEWTRK ... http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4450.txt, for
those who missed it.
undertaking an effort to reclassify many pre-IETF (pre-1000)
RFCs as Historic.
Given that these are pre-IETF RFCs, I move that we create a new
designation of "Pre-Historic".
I think Peter's suggestion is brilliant, but it point out a disagreement
about what "Historic" means, in the IETF.
Quoting Keith Moore, from later in this thread:
Problem is, the IETF isn't really big enough to have a good idea about
whether some technologies are still used.
Keith is mirroring the criteria used in the RFC 4450 decrufting effort,
which was "not reflecting documented practice in the world today", which the
IETF community isn't well-placed to know. So moving things to Historic is
Really Hard.
A different but related problem is that moving a specification to Historic,
for at least a significant part of the community, doesn't just mean "it's
old", it means "and you shouldn't use it".
The issue *I* thought we were dealing with in the decrufting effort wasn't
specifications that had been superceded or otherwise obsolete (the RFC 2026
definition of Historic); the problem was specifications that no one still
active in the IETF had worked on - or at least, no one would admit it! - and
no one was willing and able to work on.
I thought at the time that our criteria shouldn't be whether anyone was
USING the specification, what mattered was whether anyone in the community
had the interest and expertise to maintain or extend the specification. It's
not as if the RFCs disappear in a puff of smoke when they are recategorized,
...
I was in the rough on that one in 2005, but since we're looking at another
bulk recategorization effort, I might make this suggestion again - perhaps
we could define a new level, which might be called something like "Not
Maintained", with the criteria as, "we can't identify anyone who is willing
and able to maintain the specification" That's actually something the IETF
COULD know. We could ask, and if we hear crickets, "Not Maintained". If
somebody shows up later, recategorize.
No presumption that you shouldn't use the specification, only that you
shouldn't expect the IETF to maintain it. And if that's a problem for you,
please feel free to start identifying people who are willing and able to
maintain it.
If Mykyta was planning to identify pre-IETF RFCs as "Not Maintained", that
might be less controversial.
And I'll leave the suggestion to move the Historic parts of 2026 to
Historic, to someone else :D
Spencer, as an individual
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