Re: I-D expiry [was Re: RFCs vs Standards]

[Scott Bradner <[e-mail]>]

IDs are cited all the time in patent cases (I've done so many times) - there is not an issue 
with identifying the right content - the IETF Secretariat has a process that provides 
the text that was published under a particular name and the date it was published

Scott

> On Dec 7, 2024, at 8:15 PM, Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hiya,
> 
> On 07/12/2024 23:51, Carsten Bormann wrote:
>> any I-D) being inappropriate to cite
> 
> Well, I-Ds truly are not great things to cite because:
> 
> - if you only cite the file name(e.g. [1]) then the
> content may have changed when the reader gets to it
> - if you cite a specific draft number and a newer draft
> is ever created the reader won't know which was meant unless
> the author called that out, which is extremely rare - much
> more common would be that neither author nor reader really
> know any of these IETF/I-D minutiae.
> 
> I don't think the above is at all affected by supposed
> expiry.
> 
> I-Ds can be very useful things to reference and some such
> references are done well, but most in the academic literature
> are done seemingly carelessly or without really understanding
> what can change.
> 
> S.
> 
> [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-thomson-gendispatch-no-expiry/
>