Re: draft-housley-two-maturity-levels

[Doug Barton <[e-mail]>]

On 01/27/2011 01:10, John C Klensin wrote:
>
>
> --On Thursday, January 27, 2011 09:41 +0200 Gonzalo Camarillo
> <[e-mail]>  wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> yes, I also agree the first one is the most important point
>> and has not been addressed so far. If we want a system that
>> works (and is used), it needs to include incentives to move
>> from one level to the next one. I have discussed this issue
>> with quite a few people. Some people claim that those
>> incentives exist in some areas (e.g., public institutions
>> preferring or requiring full standards in their RFQs) but, at
>> least in the RAI area, the incentives are not there in the
>> vast majority of cases.
>
> Gonzalo,
>
> Suppose we were to succeed in returning Proposed Standard to its
> intended purpose --  more or less a good rough sketch of a
> protocol, suitable for implementation and testing with the
> support of mailing list discussions -- and being completely
> clear about what that meant.   I think the incentives to advance
> to a more complete specification that represented community
> consensus about its being implementable and probably useful
> would then be clear.
>
> That change clearly requires our being very clear internally
> that Proposed Standard is a lightweight spec with a lightweight
> approval process: if we can't get away from the mentality of
> "you made me review this, so I have to find at least something
> to comment on and ask for changes" in the various review teams
> and the IESG, I think it is pretty much hopeless and that
> draft-housley-two-maturity-levels will turn out to accomplish
> exactly nothing other than to eliminate whatever further
> specification refinement occurs in the few documents that now to
> to Full Standard.
>
> As long as we apply a very high bar to entry for Proposed
> Standard and insist that specifications at that level are
> perfectly good standards, there will rarely be an incentive to
> move to the second level, no matter what we call it and whether
> or not there is a third level.
>
> I think the change, and the incentives, might be reinforced by
> renaming "Proposed" to "Rough Preliminary Specification" or
> something else without "Standard" in its name, but that is a
> separate matter.

I've made this statement before, so I'll only touch on it briefly. The 
world outside the IETF does not understand the difference between our 
various flavors of "RFC" now. There is absolutely no hope of refining 
that understanding EXternally when we can't even follow it consistently 
INternally.

To some extent I think Russ' draft accurately reflects the status quo, 
namely that drafts are the new proposed, and that proposed is the new 
deployed. I'm hesitant to provide full-throated support for the draft 
for a few reasons:

1. To the extent that anyone still cares that I once managed the IANA I 
don't want to appear to be trying to influence the IETF's processes.
2. As an IETF participant I haven't fully thought through all the 
ramifications of the draft.
3. As both an IETF participant and as a consumer of the standards we 
create I still believe (as I've said previously) that what we need is 
not an evolution, but a revolution; with different names for things that 
more accurately reflect their status and intended use. However, it's 
pretty obvious at this point that there is no broad support for this 
position, so I won't waste more time on it.


hth,

Doug

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