Re: [Iasa20] Odd deprecations in draft-ietf-iasa2-consolidated-upd-05

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Tuesday, February 12, 2019 16:29 -0500 Russ Housley
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> Brian:
> 
>> 3716 [...] is just an old Informational on how we used
>> to administer the IETF, so it needs to go.
> 
> Really, I do not agree.  RFC 3716 is the report of a committee
> formed by the IETF Chair and the IAB Chair at the time.  It is
> informational, and it was used as inout to develop other BCP
> process documents.  What does it even mean to deprecate such a
> committee report?

We have another meaning for that term, which is related to
terminology appropriate to Applicability Statements and what
would presumably be a "good idea while it lasted but it didn't
work out or was OBE" subcategory of "Not Recommended".   We use
A/S documents so infrequently as to forget they exist, but that
does not make it desirable to make them less useful.   I have no
idea what it means to deprecate a process document, whether a
committee report or not -- the procedure is in effect or it is
not in effect.   Unfortunately, we seem to have a category of
"in effect but usually or always ignored" too, but that doesn't
affect deprecation either.

On the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that this report
is Historic, at least in the sense that it is of interest to
those who are trying to understand how we got here but that we'd
be very concerned if someone cane along today and wanted to
reference it normatively as an authority.

The question then becomes how to do that.  In principle, the
IESG can do it by a Last Call and action in the tracker and
metadata.    Would this document be a decent reference for such
an action and could approving it eliminate the need for an extra
IETF LC?  I think "yes"; YMMD.  Whether that is appropriate
and/or optimal or not is another question.   If people think it
isn't and separate action is appropriate, that is fine with me
as long as the IESG agrees to process it as Historic.   If they
don't want to do that or don't consider it a high priority, then
I think a comment in this document to the effect that the
Executive Director being referred to is the older function
rather than the new one is in order, is part of the price we pay
for reusing the term with a different meaning, and part of the
WG's mandate to clean up side-effects of the IASA transition.
Whether the phrasing in the I-D is optimal for that is, again,
another question but those who conclude it isn't are encouraged
to send text.

> Further, RFC 3716 only contains a single reference to
> "Executive Director", and that is a historical note about
> where the position was homed.  So, it is not clear to me how
> this got sucked up in the IASA2 activity.

See Brian's note(s) but the above reasoning suggests that its
getting sucked in was and is appropriate, at least unless the
IESG wants to move, now, to make 3716 Historic.

best,
    john