Subject: RE: OPEN ISSUE: Standards Track

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 15:00:34 +0300

Hi Spencer,

> >There is also a more fundamental issue with the IETF's engineering
> >practices.  Although our current standards track contains three
> >levels of maturity (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard and Full
> >Standard), we do not have sufficient differentiation regarding the
> >quality and completeness of documents required at each stage.  The
> >bar is set very high for publication at Proposed Standard, and very
> >few documents advance beyond this stage. [OPEN ISSUE: Do we have
> >IETF consensus that this is a problem?]
> 
> We're hearing proposed solutions to this problem, so it looks like there
> are folks who agree that it's a problem.
> 
> Are there folks who DON'T agree that this is a problem?

OK, I'll bite.  This may be a problem, but I don't see this problem
as being on the critical path of problems we should solve. I am not sure
how changing the above will help us produce useful & timely standards.

The reason I say this is because other organizations, companies & marketers
are already quite happy to take IETF drafts into use, even if these have
no permanent status.  

I would not be opposed to cleaning up our standards track process, because
I think it would be useful - but I see this a smaller problem as compared
to some others ...

John

PS - on a related note, does anyone think it could be useful to try to make 
Experimental RFCs less of a second-class citizen?  My feeling is that
there is some work we may not want to completely embrace with a standards
designation, but something that lets folks go out & trial things and
come back with their findings (note - this comment implies that there
are those who think the label 'Experimental' is almost as bad as sending
something to the IRTF!)

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 15:48:29 +0200

John, you're correct, but the fact is that viewed from the outside,
the set of RFCs looks like a shambles, and in terms of maintaining
our position as *the* Internet standards body, we'd better clear
that up. I think it is a serious problem, in terms of persuading the
industry as a whole that the IETF is doing a good enough job to
recieve the support we need.

So it needs to be on the list, if not at the top of the list.

   Brian