Subject: Status of draft-christey-wysopal-vuln-disclosure-00.txt

From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 20:01:11 +0200

At some point, the authors of this IETF draft have officially
withdrawn it, but this document is still being referenced a lot,
sometimes in contexts which might lead inexperienced readers to
believe that this draft is supported by the IETF.  It's even expired.

What's the status of the document, as far as the IETF is concerned?
Will it remain in the IETF archives forever?  Has the withdrawal been
withdrawn?

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From: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:44:06 -0400 (EDT)

Personal draft have no status. Anyone who thinks they are supported by
the IETF has no idea how the IETF works.  Drafts expire in six months
and get automatically removed unless they are under consideration by the
IESG or RFC Editor. The only way to re-activate an expired draft is to
submit a new draft with at least a new version number and expiration
date. They are inherently transient documents. I don't know of any
reason to believe this one has a status any different from thousands of
other expired drafts.  In general, they are not retrievable from the
IETF, although there isn't anything stopping other people from keeping
copies.

Donald

On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, Florian Weimer wrote:

> Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 20:01:11 +0200
> From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Status of draft-christey-wysopal-vuln-disclosure-00.txt
>

======================================================================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd                       [email-masked]
 155 Beaver Street              +1-508-634-2066(h) +1-508-851-8280(w)
 Milford, MA 01757 USA                   [email-masked]

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From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 12:36:26 +0700

Date:        Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:44:06 -0400 (EDT)
    From:        Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | Drafts expire in six months and get automatically removed

Eventually, which I think is relevant here.   The draft in question
has passed its expiry date, but has not yet been expired.  That will
probably happen sometime relatively soon now, after which it will be
gone from the archives.  (Drafts gets expired in large batches, from
time to time, not on the precise day their 6 months is over).

  | The only way to re-activate an expired draft is to
  | submit a new draft with at least a new version number and expiration
  | date.

And perhaps more importantly here, the only way to withdraw a document,
in the sense of "take it out of circulation" as distinct from "not bother
to push it any more", is to do the same thing - submit a replacement
document.    The replacement need only contain the boilerplate, and
"This draft has been withdrawn", but if it isn't sent, the old one will
remain available, until it naturally expires and is removed as above.

That wasn't done here, so the "officially withdrawn it" really can only be
interpreted as "the authors are no longer pushing this doc".

kre

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From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 23:36:16 +0200

> interpreted as "the authors are no longer pushing this doc".

The authors stopped pushing this document _only in the IETF context_.
However, the document is usually referenced by its
http://www.ietf.org/ URL. I think that's why the situation is so
confusing.