[apps-discuss] Applicability Statements

[Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>]

At the IESG Retreat, we had a discussion on how we publish 
implementation advice, conformance specifications, protocol profiles, 
and the like. Right now, we often put these sorts of things in BCP or 
Informational documents. Unfortunately, these are both second class 
citizens in our document series: They don't get published as "standards" 
and they can't be reviewed and progressed along the standards track even 
though they often have information that we want to review for success.

There is a way to deal with these sorts of documents that we haven't 
tried in a very long time: RFC 2026 defines two kinds of standards track 
documents: Technical Specifications (TS), which we publish all of the 
time, and Applicability Statements (AS), which we haven't. According to 
2026, an AS can be any of the following:

     "identifies the relevant TSs and the specific way in which they are 
to be combined"
     "specify particular values or ranges of TS parameters or 
subfunctions of a TS protocol that must be implemented"
     "specifies the circumstances in which the use of a particular TS is 
required, recommended, or elective"
     "describe particular methods of using a TS in a restricted 'domain 
of applicability'"
     "comprehensive conformance specification"

That sounds to me like exactly what we're trying to do. And an AS can be 
standards track, so long as it is at the same or lower maturity level 
than any of the TSs it references, so it can get full standards track 
treatment.

So, here's my proposal, which I've already gotten some positive feedback 
from the chairs of WGs that I cover in the apps area, and which the IESG 
has agreed to go along with: For my WGs in the apps area, we're going to 
try an informal experiment and submit documents like the above to the 
IESG for Proposed Standard AS. (I already have two such documents in 
mind: The potential MARF "BCP" and the the Malformed Header document.) 
Other ADs may join in, but I'll at least start the ball rolling. I'll 
try to get some early feedback from IESG folks as we get some I-Ds 
together to sanity check, and with any luck we'll get a few of these 
published as Proposed Standard. Then the IESG can talk about the 
criteria for advancement. However it works out, the worst case will be 
that we back off and publish these things as BCP or Informational 
instead, but I'm hopeful. After we get some experience, we'll see where 
else the use of AS might make sense.

What do folks think?

pr

-- 
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Incorporated - Direct phone: [phone], Fax: [phone]