[arch-d] Proposed IAB program: Evolvability, Deployability, & Maintainability.

[Tommy Pauly <[e-mail]>]

The IAB is considering starting a new program that would look at the Evolvability, Deployability, and Maintainability of Internet protocols. The description of the program is included at the bottom of this email.

We’d like to get feedback on the proposed program topic and description. We’ll be considering this over the next few weeks, and your thoughts and input are welcome!

Best,
Tommy

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Evolvability, Deployability, & Maintainability (EDM) Program

This program will focus on how to practically encourage best practices within the IETF to ensure that the IETF’s standards process considers protocol evolution, deployability, and long-term maintainability. This group will work on documents that catalog and analyze successful strategies for protocol evolution, deployment, and maintenance, such as updating and extending RFC 6709. Moreover, it will focus on ways to help promote and increase awareness of these strategies within the IETF via program meetings, workshops, and helping organize efforts within working groups and various IETF teams. The program will include members of the IESG and the tools team to help implement these strategies.

The topics this group will consider include:

Evolvability: Encourage protocols to design for extensibility and greasing, and promote the use of extension points to prevent ossification. Make it easy for people, especially those who aren’t steeped in IETF process, to know which extension points are the right ones to use for a given protocol (and which ones should be considered more stable/ossified), and make sure there aren't high allocation barriers to use those extension points.

Deployability: Focus on how we make “running code” something that is better integrated into the working group process. Look at methods to catalog implementations, tools for tracking interoperability testing on different protocol versions, or repositories of which versions of protocols are implemented and used on the Internet. Discuss how deployments can advertise experiments they are running.

Maintainability: Many working groups have expressed a desire to have ways for the community of protocol designers and implementers to keep track of the current state of affairs in deployment patterns, known errata/bugs, or best practices. Help promote consistent ways to host non-RFC working group output, like FAQs, wikis, and discussion venues. Consider how this community involvement can continue and involve the right experts, even after a working group closes.

The program will:
	• Engage with the IETF community and implementers outside of the IETF to identity successes and problem areas, and collect ideas for improvements.
	• Work with the IESG and directorates to determine how best practices for evolvability can best be applied during IESG review and IETF last call.
	• Work with the IESG and tools team on ways to connect implementers and communities that develop and maintain protocols, both while a working group is active, and after a working group has concluded its charter.