Subject: Expiring a publication - especially standards track documents which are abandoned

From: todd glassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2011 07:23:05 -0700

There are any number of IETF RFC's which were published and then 
accepted in the community under the proviso 'that they would become IETF 
standards' which in many instances they do not. Further many of them are 
abandoned in an uncompleted mode as standards efforts.

To that end I would like to propose the idea that any IETF RFC which is 
submitted to the Standards Track which has sat unchanged in a 
NON-STANDARD status for more than 3 years is struck down and removed 
formally from the Standards Track because of failure to perform on the 
continued commitment to evolve those standards.

Why this is necessary is that the IETF has become a tool of companies 
which are trying to get specific IETF approval for their wares and 
protocols - whether they are open in form or not. The IETF entered into 
a contract with these people to establish their standard and published 
those documents on the standards track so that they would be completed.  
Since they have not been completed as IETF Standards the Project 
Managers for those submissions have formally breached their contract to 
complete that process with both their WG members who vetted those works 
as well as the rest of the IETF's relying parties.

As such it is reasonable to put a BURN DATE on any Standards Track 
effort which has stalled or stopped dead in its tracks for years.

Todd Glassey

-- 
Todd S. Glassey
This is from my personal email account and any materials from this account come with personal disclaimers.

Further I OPT OUT of any and all commercial emailings.

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From: Eric Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2011 14:39:28 -0400

Why?  No one has cared about the annual review from 2026.  No one has time to do the bookkeeping and spend the effort to evaluate stuck documents.

If there is an RFC that is harmful, then one can always ask to have it moved to Historic.

On Sep 4, 2011, at 10:23 AM, todd glassey wrote:

> There are any number of IETF RFC's which were published and then accepted in the community under the proviso 'that they would become IETF standards' which in many instances they do not. Further many of them are abandoned in an uncompleted mode as standards efforts.
> 
> To that end I would like to propose the idea that any IETF RFC which is submitted to the Standards Track which has sat unchanged in a NON-STANDARD status for more than 3 years is struck down and removed formally from the Standards Track because of failure to perform on the continued commitment to evolve those standards.
> 
> Why this is necessary is that the IETF has become a tool of companies which are trying to get specific IETF approval for their wares and protocols - whether they are open in form or not. The IETF entered into a contract with these people to establish their standard and published those documents on the standards track so that they would be completed.  Since they have not been completed as IETF Standards the Project Managers for those submissions have formally breached their contract to complete that process with both their WG members who vetted those works as well as the rest of the IETF's relying parties.
> 
> As such it is reasonable to put a BURN DATE on any Standards Track effort which has stalled or stopped dead in its tracks for years.
> 
> Todd Glassey
> 
> -- 
> Todd S. Glassey
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

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From: Hector <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2011 20:32:39 -0400

I think we all know the market generally speaks for himself on whats 
used or not used, official stamping of IETF approval or not, vendor 
interest or not.  But I also believe it is another reason why there 
are other issues, such like the RFC2119bis debates.  Today, we have 
more integrated products and vendors and organizations who required a 
higher dependency and usage of integrated framework of optional parts. 
Its always been the case, but have more of this and if there one major 
concern, is the growing mindset to accept a technical economy of scale 
model - as long as the fewer mainstreams represent a greater share of 
the usage (i.e. most of the email activity), then this is consider 
better for the greater goal.  One can use the concepts of Pareto 
Optimality [1] to understand this better.

      A Pareto optimal outcome is one such that no-one could be
      made better off without making someone else worse off.

Who can say if your Burn Date suggestion will help or not, but it 
doesn't sound prudent for one to stop or remove a technology that has 
already been implemented as a "proposed standard."  Geez, I think 
there are a number of draft I-Ds that have become "pseudo standards" 
and will never be considered or pass the IETF Internet Standard test.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency

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From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2011 18:05:16 -0700 (PDT)

I would note that progression to Internet Standard seems to have more to 
do with availability of interested folks to do the work and little to with
acceptance of the protocol. HTTP has been hanging at DS for many years and
that hasn't stopped its wide acceptance. Yes, there is now a WG working 
through extensive document improvements, but until that effort started,
HTTP work had been dormant for years. The IETF would have been laughed at
if we'd removed HTTP from standards track.

I see no reason to invoke bureaucratic wheel spinning to reclassify a
forgotten document. 

On Sun, 4 Sep 2011, Eric Burger wrote:

> Why?  No one has cared about the annual review from 2026.  No one has 
> time to do the bookkeeping and spend the effort to evaluate stuck 
> documents.
> 
> > accepted in the community under the proviso 'that they would become
> > IETF standards' which in many instances they do not. Further many of
> > them are abandoned in an uncompleted mode as standards efforts.
> > 
> > To that end I would like to propose the idea that any IETF RFC which
> > is submitted to the Standards Track which has sat unchanged in a
> > protocols - whether they are open in form or not. The IETF entered
> > into a contract with these people to establish their standard and
> > published those documents on the standards track so that they would be
> > completed.  Since they have not been completed as IETF Standards the
> > Project Managers for those submissions have formally breached their
> > contract to complete that process with both their WG members who
> > vetted those works as well as the rest of the IETF's relying parties.
> >

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From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:41:25 +0200

>> To that end I would like to propose the idea that any IETF RFC which is submitted to the Standards Track which has sat unchanged in a NON-STANDARD status for more than 3 years is struck down and r…
In all cases I'm aware of where promises have been made based on the 
eventual status of the document (such as in certain IPR disclosures), 
the community has accepted that a Proposed Standard is a standard status.

I refer the community to the thread on -twolevel for all the other stock 
arguments on the issue.