Re: draft-housley-two-maturity-levels-00

["Spencer Dawkins" <[e-mail]>]

OK, we really do seem determined to relive the early 2000s...

> It seems to me that abolishing the third level is possible, now, because 
> the handling of I-Ds has been enhanced.  IMHO, it is an advantage to 
> require some experience before giving an I-D the rank of Proposed 
> Standard.  Because I-Ds can change more rapidly and informally than an 
> official standardization round, the early adoption phase can be much more 
> agile that way.
>
> However, some I-Ds become RFCs unexpectedly soon, and may ship untested 
> prototypes.  If it is agreed that this is rather a shift of maturity 
> levels than simply the abolishment of the last, then some of the current 
> criteria for Draft Standard should be formally shifted to Proposed 
> Standard accordingly.

There were proposals for Stable Snap Shots (SSS) from Scott Bradner, and 
Working Group Snapshots (WGS) from me, Dave, and Charlie Perkins. If I'm 
remembering correctly, both were intended to say "this is stable NOW, but I 
wouldn't put it in firmware, because we're still getting experience with it, 
and it could change".

Working Group Snapshots (WGS) in
http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-dawkins-pstmt-twostage-01.txt

Stable SnapShots (SSS), in
http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-bradner-ietf-stds-trk-01.txt

For extra credit, we could implement these with no 2026/2418 changes, if
changing 2026/2418 is as impossible as it looks - neither BCP says we CAN'T
do WGS/SSS.

We probably don't want to restart these discussions without someone 
summarizing the state of play in previous discussions, because Groundhog's 
Day was a great movie, but a lousy standards process :D

Thanks,

Spencer