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

["Joel M. Halpern" <[e-mail]>]

Responding here both to Job and to Chris Morrow.

There is indeed an argument that operational guidance has the dual 
properties of
1) needing to be out promptly
2) changing over time as the operational environment changes.

I do realize that Job's initial motivation for this was specifically 
operational.  But most of the discussion has not seemed to be restricted 
to that.  I do know that various people have asked for much more dynamic 
protocol specs.  And some of the examples cited have been protocol 
specs.  That is what makes me nervous.

If the focus is operational documents, there ought to be a way to do 
something, and it ought to be worth a try.  Finding ways for the IETF to 
be more useful to operators, and for operators to be able to participate 
in a fashion taht is more eff3ective for what they need, does seem 
valuable.  And with the restriction, many of my concerns do not apply. 
(We do, for example, allow the contents of a BCP to change even though 
the underlying individual RFCs are immutable.  While this is aimed to be 
much faster, it seems related.)

Yours,
Joel

On 7/19/2019 12:14 AM, Job Snijders wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 11:58:06PM -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
>> (Supporting Keith on this.)
>>
>> One of the key benefits of IETF meetings is cross-area review.  One of
>> the key reasons for having WG last call is the observed need for
>> review outside the working group.  One of the observation from many
>> such reviews is that it is amazing how much a working group can miss
>> while getting its core stuff right.  Yes, this also means that
>> periodically folks raise objections that are spurious, miss the point,
>> or have been addressed already.  But the cost of not having the review
>> is VErY high.
>>
>> Yes, folks have suggested that the review should be lightened or
>> eliminated.  So far, the community has refused to do that.  And I for
>> one am very glad that is so.  In spite of having had to deal with some
>> frustrating objections in many cases.
> 
> Joel,
> 
> My take on it is that the context of this conversation is not protocol
> specifications or extensions, but operational guidance. What some in
> this thread are advocating for is a pathway to publish an equivalent of
> BCPs in a shorter timeframe than 12 to 36 months.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Job
>