On Wed, Jul 3, 2019 at 1:34 PM Joel M. Halpern <jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Let me phrase it differently, with a similar point to Keith's
An IETF working group can say "we think this has the right content, but
we are not yet handing it to the AD because ..."
That is a form of stability
It is NOT a promise not to change the content before RFC publication.
As an example, I as co-chair thought the NSH spec was very stable, and
then a technical issue was raised that required an incompatible change.
It was still a working group document. We made the change.
Exactly.
Further, a working group can not label a draft in a way that suggests
that there is IETF consensus in support of the document. That is not
its purview. And is believe the implication that Keith is concerned about.
Yes, it is in no way appropriate to claim / imply that the document has IETF consensus, any more than it is appropriate to claim that an ID does. If this idea were to go ahead, we could adapt it to have (more prominent, with asterisks and similar!) boilerplate to clarify that this is only what the WG currently thinks, and isn’t an IETF consensus, or an rfc or anything else...
I do not expect that either Heather or Warren were looking at the later
interpretation. But I can see how someone reading the email could
reasonably be concerned about such over-ambition.
Fair - that wasn’t the idea, but it definitely need clarification...
And your response that working groups can publish whatever they want is
at best misleading. It is true that the content of I-Ds is up to the
working group. The labeling of them is NOT up to the working group.
(We do, consciously, deliberately, and to significant advantage, make
all our works-in-progress visible to the world. They are labelled as such.)
Yours,
Joel
PS: I am not sure what the general benefit of marking an I-D as 'stable"
would be.
Primary, if you are external to the IETF, and want to get a “snapshot” of what the WG has agreed to on a draft.
As an example, I was recently working on a draft where people started implementing bits which were still very much under discussion - this hurt the draft because it made it hard to change. I made some proposed edits to this section anyway to get WG feedback... and implementers suddenly changed to this...
After a few rounds of “hey, we are changing this again” implementers got annoyed, the WG got annoyed, and I got annoyed.
I would have liked to be able to easily signal “if you want to implement, this version is mostly sane. It’s obviously still subject to change, but at least more than the authors think it’s reasonable.” versus “this version has many bits which we don’t have WG agreement on: we put them in so they can be reviewed. Please wait till we agree that it isn’t filled with craziness before implementing, etc.”
We still would not want it normatively cited.
Indeed. As the FAQ section says, ‘tis just a draft, just like any other....
I tried to
construct the most positive such label in teh example above. I may or
may not have time to join the side-meeting.
On 7/3/19 4:23 PM, Richard Barnes wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 3, 2019 at 4:18 PM Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
> On 7/3/19 4:15 PM, Richard Barnes wrote:
>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 3, 2019 at 4:10 PM Keith Moore
>> <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> On 7/3/19 4:04 PM, Warren Kumari wrote:
>>
>> > Hi there all,
>> >
>> > TL;DR: Being able to mark a specific version of an *Internet
>> Draft* as
>> > “stable” would often be useful. By encoding information in
>> the name
>> > (stable-foo-bar-00) we can do this.
>> >
>> > Heather and I will be holding a side meeting at IETF 105 to
>> discuss
>> > the idea and get feedback.
>> > When: Tue, July 23, 3:00pm – 4:30pm
>> > Where: C2 (21st Floor)
>>
>> It seems to me that this would defeat the entire purpose of
>> Internet-Drafts and serve to circumvent the IETF process. There
>> should be no expectation of stability until a document has
>> reached
>> IETF-wide consensus.
>>
>>
>> Why is it necessary to conjoin those two things?
>
> Because a working group does not have the authority to make such
> decisions on its own. To the extent that it would be desirable to
> invest such authority in some body for some specific purpose, a
> working group is the wrong kind of body to do that. The norms
> around IETF WG operation aren't the right ones for such a body.
>
>
> Doesn't have the authority to publish stable specifications? Obviously,
> a WG can't publish something and claim it has consensus or is an RFC.
> But WGs already have the ability to publish stable docs, by publishing
> them on github or on IPFS. This is just about making them easier to
> find and reference.
>
> I think maybe you're over-inflating the significance of this proposal.
>
> --Richard
I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad idea in the first place.
This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair of pants.
---maf
This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair of pants.
---maf
