Re: Evolving Documents (nee "Living Documents") side meeting at IETF105.)

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 7/20/19 12:01 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
>
> --On Saturday, 20 July, 2019 10:17 -0400 Warren Kumari
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 9:00 AM Christopher Morrow
>> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 8:51 AM Keith Moore
>>> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>> I believe your statement of intent.  But I think it's fair
>>>> to realize that there is already tremendous pressure to
>>>> deploy implementations before they've been formally
>>>> approved, and there's a danger that any kind of
>>>> distinguished "mark" will have the (unintended) effect of
>>>> promoting deployment of the marked version of a protocol.
>>> regardless of 'published or not' folk will always push for
>>> the early implementation of FOO before it has been 'ratified'.
>>> it's pretty clear that this happens, and that nothing about
>>> this discussion is going to change that.
>>>
>> *I* think that we really want early implementations of FOO
>> before it has been ratified - without this we don't have the
>> "running code" part of "rough consensus and running code.
>> I think the trouble comes in when there are *deployments* of
>> FOO before it has been ratified....
> Exactly.  And, at the risk of singing an old song, that was
> exactly what Proposed Standard was supposed to be about.
>
> So, with the understanding that I'm not optimistic about this
> for the reasons I gave earlier and a quarter-century of history,
> consider an alternate proposal: Return Proposed Standard to its
> original intended status.

I'm fairly certain that there's far too much baggage and inertia 
associated with the current notion of Proposed Standard to do that.   
Part of that baggage, of course, includes IESG effectively raising the 
bar for Proposed Standard in order to try to make it actually worth 
deploying.  But part of the baggage is also the well-entrenched practice 
of deploying at or before Proposed.  And a lot of that is due to market 
pressure and "move fast and break things" industry practice that we're 
unlikely to have much influence over.

So if we were going to make a significant change to the process, it 
seems likely that we either keep Proposed Standard similar to what it 
actually is now, and make necessary changes elsewhere in the process 
(most likely prior to WGLC, though changes after PS might also be 
useful), or we rethink the whole thing and assign new names to the 
resulting stages.   I have a lot more confidence in the former approach, 
because of the tremendous hazard of second-system effect with a clean 
sheet approach.

Keith