Re: registries and designated experts

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 2012-06-12 17:31, SM wrote:
> Hi Peter,
> At 07:19 12-06-2012, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>> By my reading, the "happiana" discussions [1] over the 12+ months have
>> led most participants to the conclusion that registration does not imply
>> standardization, and that it's not the role of the designated expert to
>> act as a gatekeeper with respect to the technical merits of the
>> technologies that trigger registration requests. It might be good to
>> have a wider discussion about the purpose of registries and the role of
>> designated experts, but IMHO it's not correct to conclude that a
>> technology is acceptable just because the designated expert didn't
>> object to the registrations related to that technology.
> 
> I'll +1 the above.
> 
> In a recent review the path followed by the draft is Standards Action
> whereas the assignment policy is Expert Review.  Explaining to the
> authors that they should not use the assigned value isn't a worthwhile
> effort given that they have already been through the gate to get the
> value.  The Designated Expert did his job; that is to see that the
> requirements were met instead of acting as gatekeeper.  If you reject
> assignment requests people will find it simpler not to register the
> values.  If you accept the request people might consider that the
> specification is fine.
> 
> The reasons provided for managing a namespace are:
> 
>   - prevent the hoarding of or unnecessary wasting of values
> 
>   - provide a sanity check that the request actually makes sense
> 
>   - interoperability issues
> 
> The above is at odds with standardization.  The last reason does not
> apply for Expert review.

I don't understand that statement. RFC 5226 says, in Section 2 about
"Why Management of a Namespace May Be Necessary":

"  A third, and perhaps most important, consideration concerns potential
   impact on the interoperability of unreviewed extensions."

One of the specific considerations for designated experts in section 3.3
is

"      - the extension would cause problems with existing deployed
        systems."

It seems clear that interoperability is a primary concern for any
expert review.

    Brian