--On Saturday, June 15, 2019 16:32 -0400 Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 6/15/19 6:48 AM, Kathleen Moriarty wrote: > >> I'll add to Paul's description. Within the request, for one >> document, they wish to make a profile. Normally, that's >> fine. Except that they want to change keywords in >> directions that they should not be changed in a profile. >> For instance changing a MUST to a SHOULD or even a MUST >> NOT. This obviously results in the profile not being in >> compliance with the referenced document and therefore not >> interoperable. > > Why would this community want to grant permission to do that, > even if it were in our power to do so? Keith (and others), I've supplied a good deal of historical information to John Levine off-list, but your question goes to what I think is the key issue. Unless we, for some reason I can't imagine, want to encourage the creation of confusion about what our standards do or do not say or require, we shouldn't grant this permission or spend energy exploring ways to figure out what can or cannot reasonably be granted and/or what is in the IETF Trust's power to grant. Instead, we should encourage whomever this is to incorporate our standard (or selected parts of it) by reference (something we could not prevent if we wanted to) and then to identify what they want to make different. "Our protocol is just like the IETF's User Datagram Protocol [RFC768] except that where the FizzleFraz case is mentioned the implementer MUST NOT do Garglezork even if the IETF requires doing so." Is a perfectly good style of statement. We couldn't prevent it if we wanted to (although some effort to explain to them why it would be a bad idea might be in order depending on what they are actually trying to do and why). And it creates absolutely no confusion about what the IETF Protocol is. It seems to me that trying to give them permission to make partial copies in support of developing a forked or conflicting standard is not in the interest of either the IETF community or the RFC Series and that, if the IETF Trust is exploring doing so, they are in danger of losing their way about their obligations to the community. best, john
