Subject: Re: IANA considerations

From: Bruce Lilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 10:28:27 -0400

John Klensin wrote:

> That said, I think we should be paying careful attention to
> Bruce's implied suggestion about how template
> boilerplate-generators should be constructed.

Some clarification:
1. In the specific case of the troff/nroff rfc macros and template,
   Ned's characterization of the text as boilerplate is inaccurate.
   True boilerplate (IPR boilerplate, Copyright notices, Status of
   this Memo, RFC-Editor funding Acknowledgment, even the canned
   versions of IESG notes) are contained in the macro package, not
   visible in an author/editor's source document and not emitted until
   the document is formatted.  The template is provided as a convenience
   for authors/editors, and has some template text corresponding to the
   basic recommended RFC structure, some hints on how to do things such
   as include text that is present in a draft but disappears in RFC
   form (e.g. a draft change history), etc.  An author/editor is of
   course free to ignore the template completely, using the macros with
   a source document created from scratch, or modified from another
   source document.  The case might well be different for other means of
   generating drafts and RFCs, where a "boilerplate" characterization
   might be apropos, but it is not in this instance.  "Placeholder"
   would be a suitable term.
2. I posted what I had put in the template; others are of course free
   to do nothing at all, to do something completely different, to do
   something similar, or even to use the same text verbatim (it is not
   copyrighted).  I added the "...presence of this template text..."
   part about 3 weeks ago during early parts of this discussion.  I
   thought it was a reasonable thing to do at the time, and I still
   think so (if anything, I might be inclined to remove or comment out
   the "no IANA considerations" text, which is in fact suggested wording
   for that specific case and it appears on a single source line with the
   other text (so failure to edit gets the whole  thing, and explicit
   action is required to make any change, whether that's to remove
   the warning or to substitute real considerations).  I'm not presuming
   to suggest that others should do likewise.  They are free to do so,
   but to the extent that some people think that I'm some sort of whacko,
   they might be inclined to do something contrary, and they are of
   course also free so to do.

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---

From: Bruce Lilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 10:35:26 -0400

>  Date: 2005-07-06 21:12
>  From: Bill Strahm <[email-masked]>

> I actually would prefer
> IANA Considerations
>     This section left intentionally blank

That contains at least one certain inaccuracy: it's there, which
contradicts "left ... blank".

Unless you have a bulletproof way of ascertaining intentions (as
opposed to apathy, petulance, and/or laziness), it may contain an
additional inaccuracy.