Re: Last Call: Moving RFC 4405, RFC 4406, RFC 4407 (Sender-ID) to Historic

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

Hi John,
At 09:08 AM 20-06-2018, John C Klensin wrote:
>While I agree that adding a note is reasonable and that
>providing a reference to current status (as viewed from the
>IETF's perspective) is probably more so, I think "defeats the
>purpose" is wild hyperbole or worse.  There are actually two
>goals of this registry.  One is simply to avoid inadvertent name
>collisions and that certainly is not facilitated by hiding or
>dropping names unless we somehow want to encourage their reuse.

I did not suggest removing the entry as it might make it difficult 
for people to look up information about SMTP extensions.

>The other is to allow the client maintainers who see a service
>extension announcement (or server maintainers who, in violation
>of 5321, see a service extension request) to easily look that
>purported extension up and see what it is about.   Unless the

Yes.

>IESG has a magic wand that will cause any and all uses of
>Sender-ID to disappear the instant that this action is taken, it
>is _very_ important that the registry entry remain and that it
>point to useful information, both about what Sender-ID is/was
>and why the IETF now claims it is Historic and, presumably, is
>making a "NOT RECOMMENDED" (see 2026) statement about it.

Yes.

>At the risk of kicking a dead horse, the above is precisely why
>I prefer to see RFCs published to cover cases like this (as
>Applicability Statements for present or former standards track
>documents) rather than simple tracker notes.   I don't actually
>care about Sender-ID or friends.  The original documents were
>Experimental, an explanation has been published about why the
>experiment was concluded and these approaches were not viable,
>and, if the tracker note is sufficiently clear about why the
>action is being taken _and_ registries updated with appropriate
>"HISTORIC" and "don't use this" notations and references, I
>think this approach is probably ok (although not my first
>preference).   However, I recommend we use this discussion as
>motivation to discourage tracker-style reclassifications to
>Historic for standards-track documents when the intent is to
>convey a "don't start using this is you are not and, if you are,
>please start phasing it out" sort of recommendation.

Several years ago, there was a discussion about this experiment.  It 
was not viable to do the reclassification at that time.  I don't 
think that tracker-style reclassification is a good idea.  Anyway, 
you explained it better than I could.

>I think that section is irrelevant to this discussion except to
>the degree that it explains the reasons for having registry
>entries (and keeping them there and keeping them up to date).
>If someone thinks that is not explained adequately, please file
>an erratum -- I still assume that the time will come in which a
>replacement to 5321 will be appropriate and, while I'm keeping
>notes and a working version of a revision, relying entirely on
>that is probably not wise.

I am not inclined to file an erratum on this as it would be 
ill-thought-out. :-)

Regards,
S. Moonesamy