Re: Gen-ART Telechat Review of draft-ietf-karp-routing-tcp-analysis-06

[Ben Campbell <[e-mail]>]

I think Nick's email was a review of the document in general, rather than commentary on my review in particular. But since it was addressed to me, I do have one comment in response:

On Dec 18, 2012, at 4:12 PM, Nick Hilliard <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 18/12/2012 20:14, Ben Campbell wrote:
>> ** Nits/editorial comments:
>> 
>> -- The 2119 paragraph was removed, but there's still an orphaned 2119 entry in the informational reference section.
> 
> I'm not sure that this was a good idea.  There are a lot of "has to"s in
> this text, and it's not clear to me whether they are phrased like that as a
> way of getting around 2119, or what's going on.  Whatever the reason, "has
> to" sounds very informal and probably not suitable for a document like
> this.  Could we have some clarification as to why "has to" doesn't mean
> "MUST" (or even "SHOULD").

I don't think so. This draft does not establish a standard, or define a protocol. While I don't speak for the authors, I don't think it's intended to make normative statements about anything. The language is descriptive, not prescriptive.

(I agree "has to" is an awkward substitute for the non-normative "must". I agree that "must" should generally be avoided when there can be confusion about the normativeness of a statement. I'm not sure that's the case here, since the whole doc is non-normative. And I think we could find better language even when the confusion is possible.)