Re: Last Call: draft-klensin-norm-ref (Handling Normative References for Standards Track Documents) to BCP

--On Saturday, February 24, 2007 4:09 PM -0500 Sam Hartman 
<hartmans-ietf@mit.edu> wrote:

>>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Petch <sisyphus@dial.pipex.com> writes:
>
>     Tom> I have no problem with the underlying idea, in so far
> as I     Tom> understand it, but I do not agree that this I-D
> is the best     Tom> way to achieve it.
>
>     Tom> I think that my problem is well illustrated by a
> sentence in     Tom> the Abstract ' This document replaces the
> "hold on normative     Tom> reference" rule will be replaced
> by a "note downward     Tom> normative reference and move on"
> approach. ' As may be     Tom> apparent, this brief - three
> pages plus boilerplate - I-D,     Tom> aimed at BCP status,
> only partly updates or replaces BCP97     Tom> (also three
> pages plus boilerplate) so we will in future have     Tom> to
> conflate two documents to understand what is on offer.
>
> My strong preference as an individual is to approve this
> document as is.  I think there's a good split between RFC 3967
> and this document. RFC 3967 will cover informational
> documents; this document will cover standards track.
>
> I'm not in principle opposed to having one document but I am
> opposed to the delay it would introduce.

Tom,

This is very much up to the IESG, but my personal opinion is 
that we are better off putting this draft through as is and then 
coming back and revisiting the situation in a year or so, once 
we have gotten some experience with the combination.  My guess 
-- harking back to the original "process experiment" theory -- 
is that some tuning is going to be needed and that there is no 
point in tangling 3967 up with the tuning process.  That 
assumption is particularly important because Sam's observation 
of 3967 for informational (and experimental) documents and this 
for standards-track is what I'm expecting too... but it is an 
assumption.  One can imagine the community responding to a 
downref under this procedure for a particular document by saying 
"just too dangerous to do it that way; let's use the 3967 
procedure in that case".   We might be willing to eliminate that 
possibility once we have some more experience, but I'd think it 
would be dangerous to do so right now.  So, for the present, we 
have this procedure for standards-track documents when it seems 
appropriate and 3967 for everything else.

In a year or two, if anyone cares, we can fold the two together 
on the basis of actual experience (or fold both into the 
long-avoided 2026bis).

    john

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