--On Sunday, May 31, 2015 12:39 +0200 Harald Alvestrand
<harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>...
> Now this statement is about Internet-Drafts, not about the RFC
> series or any substream thereof.
>
> If we figured out who is in charge of the Internet Drafts
> mechanism as a whole, that body might be the right one to make
> pronouncements for the whole whatever-it-is. (I don't think
> we've ever called the Internet drafts a document series...)
Actually we've carefully avoided that. It clearly was not the
case when I-D actually expired and disappeared from
IETF-maintained repositories.
> I don't think we've figured out that yet. And it's a separate
> topic.
IIR, we actually discussed that at some length years ago, about
the time we decided that all proposed RFCs except the 1 April
ones should be posted as I-Ds first (long before streams were
formalized) and perhaps more recently. The conclusion then was
that I-Ds really were an IETF issue (otherwise we might, e.g.,
end up with different expiration policies for different types of
documents) but that the IESG should exercise good sense and not
try to make policies that would unreasonably constrain non-IETF
documents. It was clear at the time that the RFC Editor could
make other policies and create other draft posting mechanisms if
they were needed (and, indeed, April 1st remains a case of that)
but that it would be an inefficiency to be avoided if needed.
We've more or less revisited the topic with IPR policies: there
are per-stream rules for RFCs but, in principle, the same rules
for all I-Ds. However, the IESG has, again IIR, decided that
I-Ds with highly restricted copyright statements will not be
processed on the standards track and perhaps not in the IETF
stream at all (don't remember).
So I'd suggest that we have discussed the issue. The
discussions have been completely consistent with your
conclusions: it is a separate issue and we don't make
pronouncements for the series as a whole without very strong
justification and then we try to keep those pronouncements
narrow and flexible.
I would welcome having the other streams make statements of
agreement in principle about whatever the IESG has to say about
the IETF stream if the leadership/management of those streams
thought that appropriate. I'd certain think it would be ok for
the other streams, the RFC Editor, the IETF Trust, and ISOC to
affirm the principle that lying or misrepresenting authorship,
support, or anything else is never appropriate, although it
would sadden me if we really concluded that was necessary rather
than obvious. However, I don't see it as help for the IESG to
tell non-IETF entities what to do.
john