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Re: [art] [saag] Date formats: RFC3339 vs. RFC 5322

Nico Williams <nico@cryptonector.com> Tue, 13 April 2021 19:05 UTC

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Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2021 14:05:04 -0500
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From: Nico Williams <nico@cryptonector.com>
To: Yakov Shafranovich <yakov@nightwatchcybersecurity.com>
Cc: saag@ietf.org, art@ietf.org
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Subject: Re: [art] [saag] Date formats: RFC3339 vs. RFC 5322
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On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 02:43:36PM -0400, Yakov Shafranovich wrote:
> Is there a preference for Internet drafts/RFCs regarding the specific
> data/time format to be used?
> 
> Right now we are referencing RFC 5322, but there has been feedback
> from multiple people that the ISO 8601 format is easier to parse. This
> is in regards to the section 3.5.5 of "draft-foudil-securitytxt-11"
> that I am working on:
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-foudil-securitytxt-11#section-3.5.4
> 
> The options I am asking about are the following:
> - RFC 3339 (a profile of ISO 8601)
> Example: 2021-04-13T06:50:53-07:00
> 
> - RFC 5322, section 3.3
> Example: Tue, 13 Apr 2021 06:50:53 -0700

My very strong preference is for ISO 8601 format dates on account of:

 - it sorts semantically correctly when sorting alphabetically (when
   using Zulu time)

 - anyone can read and write ISO 8601 format dates, and it's easy to
   memorize -- this is not true of any other format

I would further suggest that timezone information for this purpose is
not very useful in this context, and that always using Zulu time would
be best.

Nico
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