This draft should be self-explanatory -- and please be sure to look at Section 1.1 for some explanations that may short-cut some of the discussion. The bottom line is to update BCP 14 (RFC 2119) to (1) make it clear that the key words MUST(/NOT), SHOULD(/NOT), and MAY are only key words when they're in ALL CAPS, and (2) deprecate the use of the variants (SHALL, RECOMMENDED, OPTIONAL) so as to avoid reserving an unnecessarily number of key words. Discussion here, please, before Ben, who has kindly agreed to AD-sponsor this, sends it out for last call. And we do expect there to be some significant discussion on this one. Barry On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 2:55 PM, <internet-drafts@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > A new version of I-D, draft-leiba-rfc2119-update-00.txt > has been successfully submitted by Barry Leiba and posted to the > IETF repository. > > Name: draft-leiba-rfc2119-update > Revision: 00 > Title: Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words > Document date: 2016-08-09 > Group: Individual Submission > Pages: 4 > URL: https://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-leiba-rfc2119-update-00.txt > Status: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-leiba-rfc2119-update/ > Htmlized: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-leiba-rfc2119-update-00 > > > Abstract: > RFC 2119 specifies common key words that may be used in protocol > specifications. This document aims to reduce the ambiguity by > clarifying that only UPPERCASE usage of the key words have the > defined special meanings, and by deprecating some versions of the key > words. >