Responding here both to Job and to Chris Morrow.
There is indeed an argument that operational guidance has the dual
properties of
1) needing to be out promptly
2) changing over time as the operational environment changes.
I do realize that Job's initial motivation for this was specifically
operational. But most of the discussion has not seemed to be restricted
to that. I do know that various people have asked for much more dynamic
protocol specs. And some of the examples cited have been protocol
specs. That is what makes me nervous.
If the focus is operational documents, there ought to be a way to do
something, and it ought to be worth a try. Finding ways for the IETF to
be more useful to operators, and for operators to be able to participate
in a fashion taht is more eff3ective for what they need, does seem
valuable. And with the restriction, many of my concerns do not apply.
(We do, for example, allow the contents of a BCP to change even though
the underlying individual RFCs are immutable. While this is aimed to be
much faster, it seems related.)
Yours,
Joel
On 7/19/2019 12:14 AM, Job Snijders wrote:
On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 11:58:06PM -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
(Supporting Keith on this.)
One of the key benefits of IETF meetings is cross-area review. One of
the key reasons for having WG last call is the observed need for
review outside the working group. One of the observation from many
such reviews is that it is amazing how much a working group can miss
while getting its core stuff right. Yes, this also means that
periodically folks raise objections that are spurious, miss the point,
or have been addressed already. But the cost of not having the review
is VErY high.
Yes, folks have suggested that the review should be lightened or
eliminated. So far, the community has refused to do that. And I for
one am very glad that is so. In spite of having had to deal with some
frustrating objections in many cases.
Joel,
My take on it is that the context of this conversation is not protocol
specifications or extensions, but operational guidance. What some in
this thread are advocating for is a pathway to publish an equivalent of
BCPs in a shorter timeframe than 12 to 36 months.
Kind regards,
Job
