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

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Jul 03, 2019 at 03:33:09PM -0700, heather flanagan wrote:
> One of the things that attracts me to this idea of marking specific
> I-Ds as stable is the possibility that the material in the I-D will be
> more throughly tested BEFORE it gets to the RFC Editor for
> publication. I see it as, potentially, a way to improve the quality of
> what’s published in the RFC Series. 

An alternative would be to have interop test events.  The IETF does not
hold any such.  Sun used to host an annual interop test event (named
"Connectathon").  Perhaps the IETF/ISOC should host one.

That said, for some RFCs we've had many I-D versions prior to
publication, with a certain degree of stability being understood at some
point.  Formalizing that wouldn't be a bad idea, provided that it is
understood that IETF and IESG review can force backwards-incompatible
changes.

> If it means that the technical quality of the specifications published
> in the RFC Series improves, then that’s an idea I’d like to talk about
> to see if it has enough benefits to outweigh the risks of trying it
> out. So, that said, I’m hoping the side meeting makes sure we’ve
> identified the risks well enough to know what we’re up against.

+1

Nico
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