Re: Should the RFC Editor publish an RFC in less than 2 months?

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

At 4:02 PM -0500 11/28/07, John C Klensin wrote:
>So my personal preference is to not hold up
> > publication
>> (unless there is good reason to expect an appeal), but to add
>> a new
>> RFC status, let's call it PROVISIONAL for the sake of
>> argument, that
>> would be applied if an appeal is received within the 2 month
>> window
>> but after publication. If the appeal succeeds, the status can
>> be
>> changed as appropriate (likely to HISTORIC), and if the appeal
>> fails
> > it can revert to its original value.

At first I thought you meant that all RFCs would be "PROVISIONAL"
for two months, but on a second reading, what I understand you to
mean is:

1) Anything published before the appeal window closes normally gets
whatever status it would have had before (Proposed, Draft, Info, Exp).

2) Anything that gets appealed before the appeal window closed and
for which the desired remedy relates to the document's status or language
gets marked "provisional"

3) Anything for which the appeal succeeds and the remedy calls for
the document to change or the status to change sees the document
status go from "provisional" to "historic" and a new document with
a new RFC number go out with the change/new status.

I'm more-or-less okay with this, given that it does not hold up normal
processing, but I note the difference between this and just publishing
the docs and later changing their status is pretty small.  I'd personally
be willing to take the small number of cases where a document is
published but quickly moved to historic as a corner case that doesn't
need a special status.  Appeals tend to be pretty big news within our
community, and the rest of the world implements the internet drafts
anyway....

This eliminates one possible remedy:  removing something from
publication.  It's replaced with updating a document's status or
publishing an update to it saying "withdrawn as a result of appeal".
I think that's okay as a consequence of avoiding self-imposed
delay, but I do expect someone to squawk.

>I'd like to see something like the above combined with a shorter
>window, maybe at two levels ("hold publication until..." and
>"provisional until...").  Of course, if an appeal is actually
>filed, it would be sensible to hold publication until it is
>resolved.  I don't see any possible reason why we need to give
>people two months to get an appeal filed: a month or, at most,
>six weeks ought to be more than sufficient.
>
 
I also agree that shortening that appeal time is a reasonable
idea, though it might require a two-stage "Notify IESG of intent
to appeal" and "File final language"; there are some two month
periods that have large dead zones (August in Europe, Christmas
season in others).

The real problem is often that the *combination* of the two month
appeal window and the IESG response time can stretch to half a
year or longer, especially when the IESG has to do significant work
to answer an appeal.  That's the only reason I think having a
special status indicating the problem is reasonable.

			Ted

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