Re: "why I quit writing internet standards"

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

On 16 Apr 2014, at 16:19, Thomas Clausen <[e-mail]> wrote:

> That "something" could conveniently be Experimental. 

Experimental means something different in the IETF, as in:

“This is a finished specification, but we are really not sure this will work until we have run an experiment.
Don’t base any plans on the assumption that this experiment will succeed.”

Implementation draft means:

“This is still subject to change, but we promise to be frugal in the changes we make from here on.
We are pretty sure this will work, no major experiments required, just implementation experience to maybe tweak it some more.
This will be done soon, so go ahead and build the products.”

Conflating these two almost diametrally opposed sets of features into a single class of document increases confusion.

Yes, we need to find a way for implementation drafts to get IANA numbers.
(The IANA numbers problem is bigger, e.g., downrefs from finished specs should also be in a position to get numbers immediately even if not all i’s are crossed and t’s are dotted in the downref spec.)

Grüße, Carsten