Subject: [newtrk] question four for newtrk (a different topic)

From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 08:35:13 -0400 (EDT)

now for a completely different topic

the newtrk charter also has us worry about some RFC Editor related issues,
in particular (from the charter)
  "development of a primary marker to distinguish documents    
  originating from the IETF from those not originating from the IETF"

The IESG currently adds a disclaimer at the head of RFCs which have not
been developed through the IETF ("RFC Editor Documents" in the terminology
of RFC 3667) - one example is in
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/rfc_editor_announcement.cgi?command=show_detail&accepted=yes&ballot_id=136

   This RFC is not a candidate for any level of Internet Standard.
   The IETF disclaims any knowledge of the fitness of this RFC for
   any purpose, and in particular notes that the decision to publish
   is not based on IETF review for such things as security,
   congestion control or inappropriate interaction with deployed
   protocols.  The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at
   its discretion. Readers of this document should exercise caution
   in evaluating its value for implementation and deployment.

my question is: is this type of disclaimer sufficient as "a primary marker
a primary marker originating from the IETF from those not originating from
the IETF" or do we need to explore additional markers (such as coming up
with a new name (other than RFC) for the non-IETF documents or for the
IETF documents?)

Scott
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newtrk resources:_____________________________________________________
web user interface: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~llynch/newtrk.html
mhonarc archive: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~llynch/newtrk/index.html

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From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 10:11:27 -0700

>   originating from the IETF from those not originating from the IETF"

Is there a survey of not-from-IETF RFCs (besides April 1st RFCs)?

I'd be interested in an evaluation of the value of having
these published as RFCs. When the practice was started, of course,
publishing a document to everyone on the internet was hard,
and getting it into replicated RFC repositories was very useful.

Larry

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From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 16:12:16 -0400 (EDT)

> Is there a survey of not-from-IETF RFCs (besides April 1st RFCs)?

I do not know of one - I'll ask teh RFC Editor

Scott
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From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 15:30:19 -0700

Hi Larry-

> Is there a survey of not-from-IETF RFCs (besides April 1st RFCs)?

Not to my knowledge.

In fact, extracting which RFCs are individual submissions from the 
available indices is not possible, AFAIK.  The RFC Editor has been 
working on including a tag in some of the indices which notes the 
source of an RFC, e.g., working group name, IAB, IESG, individual 
submission.  When this is complete it will make it easier to at least 
compile a list of which RFCs came in through that route.  
(Unfortunately, obtaining a reliable mapping of RFC to working group 
has turned out to be very difficult.  Anyone who can help in this 
regard can contact me directly.)

> and getting it into replicated RFC repositories was very useful.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the issue of a 'primary marker' 
for published documents.  Forgive me for not following this working 
group very closely but I haven't seen an explicit description of the 
problem that a new 'primary marker' would be intended to solve.  My 
assumption is that the intent is to reduce potential confusion between 
documents which have had IETF review and those that haven't.  Are you 
suggesting that there exists no primary marker which would be 
sufficient?

--aaron

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From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 17:19:01 -0700

> suggesting that there exists no primary marker which would be 

I'm wondering if there are any recent examples where it has been
worthwhile for the RFC editor to publish a document that hasn't
had IETF review, and where IETF review would have been difficult.

Larry
-- 
http://larry.masinter.net

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From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 17:58:38 -0700

> had IETF review, and where IETF review would have been difficult.

I'm not sure I understand.  What does it mean to say the 'IETF review 
would have been difficult'?  Do you mean that it would have 
inappropriately used IESG cycles?  Or that the IETF review would have 
resulted in a 'wrong' (in someone's opinion) recommendation not to 
publish?  Or something else?

--aaron

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 21:42:34 -0400

> compile a list of which RFCs came in through that route.

one point that is easily missed here - there's also a difference 
between individual submissions that were reviewed to some degree within 
IETF (with WG or IESG review and sometimes even a Last Call) and 
individual submissions that were published by the RFC Editor without 
benefit of IETF review.

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From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 21:45:17 -0400 (EDT)

> individual submissions that were published by the RFC Editor without 

true enough - I'm asking about the 2nd class

Scott
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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 10:22:50 +0200

> true enough - I'm asking about the 2nd class

And nobody's mentioned the small elephant in the room:

Fundamentally this is the IETF's "First Amendment" issue, to use
the terminology of one particular country. Do we want to use our
publication process to allow publication of documents which have
*not* successfully passed IETF/IESG, IRTF, or IAB review, and may even
have been found objectionable by one of those bodies? The RFC Editor
has always argued passionately for this. You can argue that this isn't
a question for newtrk - in fact as BCP 39 is written, it's an IAB decision,
but it would be as well to be clear about it here.

(It seems obvious to me that such RFCs should be easily identifiable,
but that's really an operational issue for the RFC Editor.)

    Brian
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From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 14:04:18 +0300 (EEST)

> with a new name (other than RFC) for the non-IETF documents or for the

I do not think it's sufficient.  It *could* be sufficient if we went
down the STD designation path proposed by John (Klensin) --
draft-klensin-newtrk-std-repurposing-00.txt -- that practically all
the *real* standards track protocols would be identified by STDxxxx
and not the RFC number.

A possible way to tackle this problem might be to re-institute FYI
notes for those documents which have been submitted directly to the
RFC-editor.  The requirement then would be that instead of being a
sub-category of RFCs (like BCPs now), FYIs would become another class
of RFCs, just with a different name.  I.e., IETF would produce RFCs,
direct RFC-ed submissions would produce FYI documents (and FYIs
wouldn't even get an RFC number).

Maybe it's not even feasible to consider "hijacking" the RFC label to 
just the IETF, but if we have a concern that "RFC" is used 
inappropriately, we must either invent something new to distinguish 
the "real stuff" (e.g., the STD path), or designate the rest in some 
other manner.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 07:02:44 -0500

What Pekka said, with one addition - somewhere, in a galaxy far, far
away, John Loughney's what-standards proposal is waiting to help, too.
But yes, I have a concern that "RFC" is used inappropriately. Things
have improved (many people now care whether an RFC is standards-track
or not, and this is up from "this protocol has been submitted to the
IETF as a standard" 5-10 years ago"), but this is progress in spite of
our process - we've done nothing except abuse people who didn't "get
it" to help them learn to tell the difference.

Re: whether we do something to distinguish "the real stuff" or "the
unreal stuff" (smirk) - when I was thinking about WGS, it did occur to
me that if I wanted non-ephemeral WGS, it would be trivial enough to
specify WGS as individual (!) submissions for publication as
Informational RFCs. This SHOULD be the right answer, but history made
me steer away from the idea, because I lacked confidence that enough
people would distinguish WGS RFCs from standards-track RFCs.

And if that's the wrong answer, I wish people would tell me so.

Spencer

From: "Pekka Savola" <[email-masked]>

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 07:23:44 -0500

I think Brian's followup morphs the rest of this thread into "Re:
[newtrk] guestion 5 for newtrk", but - yes, I think that RFC-Editor
publication is (somewhat) useful (and would be more useful if it was
faster than other publication mechanisms), but I think it's a lot less
useful than it was fifteen years ago, or even ten, and share Keith's
concern that coming up with a REAL primary marker to distinguish
standards-track from non-standards-track is table stakes to continue
down this road.

And the current assignment of STD numbers for full standards is NOT a
"REAL primary marker", for the purposes of this discussion. Something
like "what-standards" could be, if we did a good job of completing it.

Spencer

From: "Brian E Carpenter" <[email-masked]>

Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2004 3:22 AM
Subject: Re: [newtrk] question four for newtrk (a different topic)

> newtrk
resources:_____________________________________________________
> mhonarc archive:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~llynch/newtrk/index.html

.