Re: call for ideas: tail-heavy IETF process

[Olaf Kolkman <olaf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On May 5, 2013, at 7:54 AM, Hannes Tschofenig <hannes.tschofenig@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On 05/05/2013 01:37 PM, Benoit Claise wrote:

On 2/05/2013 18:17, Carsten Bormann wrote:

On May 2, 2013, at 07:21, "Eggert, Lars" <lars@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Yeah, all kinds of issues, but if we created a new thing here in
between WGLC and PS, the broader industry would never understand.

That is a matter of naming and marketing ("candidate RFC"?).

There is already some misconception between I-RFC and Standards Tracks RFC.
I don't believe that adding a new name/category would help: instead it
would add to the confusion.

Regards, Benoit

Interesting that you mention this.

A note from a recent experience: Together with Olaf we are participating in a European Multistakeholder Platform for ICT standardization, see http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2011:349:0004:0006:EN:PDF

The aim of this group is to find out how to reference IETF RFC (and standards from other organizations, like the W3C) since the European Commission seems to be unable to just reference standards beyond a small set of organizations (such as ETSI).

As you can imagine, the different types of RFCs are not that easy to understand for those who do not participate actively in the IETF. Getting others to understand the different streams, the various document types and different standards is already difficult and maybe there is room for simplification here.

FWIW.

I think the difference between Informational and Standards track is fairly easily explained (in that context), having all the information in the headers and boilerplates helps. Where things become difficult is at the point where the maintenance of our standards need to be explained and questions about progression on the standards ladder get asked. 

Personally I hope that RFC 6410 has the effect that we, as a community, get serious about promoting our proposed standards, or obsolete them. 

I wonder how many standards got promoted after 6410 was published.

--Olaf