Re: Mission statement [Re: Last Call: <draft-hoffman-tao4677bis-15.txt> (The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force) to Informational RFC]

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

John,

On 2012-05-31 15:53, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
> --On Thursday, May 31, 2012 07:31 +0100 Brian E Carpenter
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> On 2012-05-31 07:22, Eliot Lear wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>>   * I've been told by some that the Mission of the IETF is in
>>>   some way out of date.  I don't know whether this is true, 
>> That sound like somebody's personal opinion, but it is still a
>> BCP and therefore still represents IETF consensus.
> 
> Brian,
> 
> Regardless of how I feel about this particular case, I don't
> understand how to put your comment in context.  In particular,
> would you 
> 
> * Assert that the IETF is so diligent about its process BCPs
> that any that have become out of date, overtaken by events, or
> otherwise irrelevant have been immediately and formally declared
> obsolete or historic?  I have better ways to spend my time at
> the moment, but I imagine that many members of the community
> could come up with lists of counterexamples rather quickly
> (perhaps starting from how long it took us to get "automatic
> review" out of RFC 2026).

True, but adding to what Scott Brim said, where is the evidence that the
mission statement is OBE? The comment I was responding to seemed
quite gratuitous.

> 
> * When a document is revised ("updated" or "obsoleted") omitting
> a reference that appeared in the earlier version requires a
> special consensus call rather than treating consensus on the new
> document, once achieved, as atomic?   Granted, the relatively
> new provisions requiring identification and explanation of what
> was obsoleted or updated are a step toward making sure that
> those participating in the consensus process are aware of what
> happened but (i) those provisions have, no far, not been
> extended to require a discussion of every changed reference and
> (ii) are not themselves in a BCP or other document that has been
> documented as achieving community consensus on the details.
> Independent of that BCP problem, would you advocate making each
> new document list all of the references to BCP or Standards
> Track documents that were not carried forward and identifying
> the reasons?

Certainly not, although there might be cases where it was
useful. ("Since carrier pigeons have gone extinct, the mapping
to Avian Carriers has been removed from this specification.")

   Brian