Subject: Re: [Emu] [Geopriv] Comments on draft-ietf-geopriv-radius-lo-20.txt PART 2

From: "Glen Zorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:20:32 +0700

Tschofenig, Hannes (NSN - FI/Espoo) [mailto:[email-masked]]
writes:

Copying the emu WG & IESG because this seems relevant to an on-going debate
in that WG...

> >Great, so change it. :-)
> 
> This stuff is already implemented and it is also referenced by
> specifications outside the IETF.

The following text is included on the first page of every Internet-Draft,
including this one:

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

EAP-FAST is a _proprietary_ protocol, but the "Internet-Draft" describing
its bizarre pirating of IANA-allocated EAP numbers can't be changed because
EAP-FAST has been "implemented"; yet for some even more bizarre reason, the
IESG seems to believe that the same people who ignore the transient nature
of Internet-Drafts will for some reason honor their weak-kneed "IESG Note"!
Now, yet another Internet-Draft can't be changed because it's been
implemented.  If the people who implemented these attributes can read, then
they certainly would have designed their code in such a way that it's easily
modifiable; if not, too bad.  Furthermore, the claim is that these
attributes are opaque to any RADIUS server, so the only code needing change
would be special purpose anyway.  OTOH, maybe we should replace the
boilerplate above with something like

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time unless somebody somewhere has written some code implementing the 
   protocol described therein.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts
   as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress"
   except if you really feel like it.

All problems solved!

> I am a bit reluctant to changing the spec just for the fun of it.

The reason to change the spec is to bring it more in line with the RADIUS
design guidelines, no for the fun of it.  There is no need to use a complex
attribute in this case, so don't do it.

...