Re: what is the problem bis

["t.petch" <[e-mail]>]

As an engineer, I do like to know what problem I am required to solve before
proposing a solution:-)  My reading of this thread is that the problem is the
length of time it takes to produce an RFC of any kind, that vendors are off to
the races at the fifth or tenth version of an I-D stage because the market will
not wait for the machinations of the IETF (and as a consequence, to most people,
the differences between PS, DS and FS are irrelevant).

As such, draft-housley-two-maturity-levels seems an irrelevance, a distraction
from the issues facing the IETF.  If there is a problem worth solving in the
space occupied by draft-housley-two-maturity-levels, then Keith's proposal for
an orthogonal set of measurements of document quality seem far more apt.

By contrast, the delays in producing an RFC seem to revolve around WG process,
where Last Call causes people to come out of the woodwork with delaying
suggestions, something a good chair or AD would stamp on, and IESG process,
where certain hot buttons - eg security, flow control - produce some ludicrous
DISCUSS' which delay the process for months.
Tom Petch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Moore" <[e-mail]>
To: "Yoav Nir" <[e-mail]>
Cc: <[e-mail]>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 3:57 AM
Subject: Re: what is the problem bis



On Oct 27, 2010, at 8:58 AM, Yoav Nir wrote:

> This comes back to the question or why have maturity levels at all. Ideally,
an implementer should prefer to implement a mature standard over a less-mature
one. In practice, adopting the more advanced standard may give you an obsolete
protocol, rather than a more stable one. IOW the standardization level of a
document does not give a potential implementer any signal as to whether or not
this standard is in any sense of the word "good".

Mostly agree.  The distinction between an older, well-tested, widely-deployed
version of a protocol vs. a newer less-tested, less-widely-deployed version with
more features is a useful distinction to make.  but the difference between (RFC
X, full) and (RFC Y, proposed) where Y >> X only conveys the barest hint of
that, and even less in the way of guidance.  I'm thinking specifically of email
standards here, where in practice you need to be able to accept RFC 822 messages
(because even new mail readers have to be able to deal with old messages) but
you should generate messages that conform to 5322 and MIME.

> And if it doesn't signal anything to the "customers" of the documents, what's
the point of having these levels at all?

That's why I think we need a different set of labels, e.g.

Protocol-Quality.  We need a statement about the perceived quality of the
protocol described in the document.   (Is this protocol well-designed for the
anticipated use cases, or does it have significant flaws (including security
flaws)?)
Applicability.  We need a statement about the current applicability of the
protocol described in the document.  (Is this protocol recommended for general
use, not recommended except in specific corner cases, not recommended at all, or
strongly discouraged?)
Document-Quality.  We need a statement about the perceived quality of the
document itself and whether the protocol description seems to be sufficiently
precise to permit implementations to interoperate.   (along with a pointer to
errata.)
Maturity.  We need a statement about the amount of actual implementation and
deployment experience that the protocol enjoys.
Completeness.  We need a statement about how accurately the document reflects
what is currently believed to be good practice for implementation/use of that
protocol, or whether effective implementation requires information not included
or referenced in the document.  (e.g. effective implementation of SMTP generally
requires some expertise in dealing with heavy loads caused by spam, looping, and
denial-of-service attacks which aren't really dealt with in any of the relevant
RFCs).
Last-Review-Date.  Date of the last review of these labels for this document.

These would go alongside the existing Updates and Obsoletes labels.  An
Applicability-Statement could also be included.

It strikes me that we could establish such a set of labels on an experimental
basis, using some sort of community review process for existing RFCs, without
making any immediate changes to our proposed/draft/full system of labeling of
standards.  IESG could assign the initial labels for new RFCs - the document
reviewers are almost doing that anyway.  The existing errata process could be
extended to allow (moderated) user comments on these labels, and the labels
could be subject to periodic review based on those comments.

If that labeling system turned out to be adequate or could be fixed with some
tweaking, we could maybe drop back to two document classes:  Informational, and
Standards-Track.  Standards-track would encompass any  former proposed, draft,
or full standard which was still in use and for which periodic reviews were
still being done.   Former Experimental documents would be reclassified as
Informational with appropriate descriptive labels.  Former Historic documents
would be reclassified as Informational with Applicability set to Historic.
Standards-track documents would expected to have periodic review of these
labels; Informational documents could have some of those labels set to
"Undetermined".

Keith




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