On 28 Jul 2016, at 21:06, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
And there's our problem, right there. Protocols without APIs are
pretty much useless these days. IPv6 without a socket API would have
been an abject failure. Without RFC 2133, RFC 2292 and their
successors,
who knows how the POSIX and Winsock support for IPv6 would have turned
out?
2367 is a sad story for me personally as people went off and extended it
everywhere and now we have an incompatible mish-mash in the world. Just
saying, maintenance is also important, and an easy and sensible way to
get updates folded back in.
The longer I think about publishing and obsoleting RFCs the more I want
an Open Source model for them and put them in version control and just
update them in place (not major extensions, but ..)—but that’s a
different discussion.
…
but there are groups out there
implementing IETF protocols and providing the APIs that allow
application developers to use those protocols and services.
That is part of the open source landscape, as well.
Sure. But if the protocol design, the API, and at least one
implementation
aren't developed in lock-step, what on earth are we doing?
Writing RFCs which are 60ish pages long, use extra markers for the
important bits and had no implementation after 5 years. Can guess which
one I was talking about?
/bz