Re: The Evils of Informational RFC's

[Russ Housley <[e-mail]>]

Sam:

>>>>>> "Bob" == Bob Braden <[e-mail]> writes:
> 
>     Bob> On 9/8/2010 3:12 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>     >> It seems to me that one of the issues here is that architecture
>     >> models are published as Informational when they're clearly not in
>     >> the same level of authority as most Informational RFCs. An
>     >> architecture document is meant to guide future work on standards
>     >> track RFCs, and has been regarded historically as more or less
>     >> binding.
> 
>     Bob> "...guide future work on standards track RFCs" -- yes.
> 
>     Bob> "...historically as more or less binding" -- no.
> Bob, this was certainly an issue that came up when I was on the IESG.
> At that time, we definitely felt that there were some architectural
> decisions that the community as a whole had bought into.  We believed
> that departing from such a decision was something that the community as
> a whole needed to revisit.  For example, when a WG was chartered to work
> on an architecture after the architecture document was approved, it
> seemed fairly clear that the community had expressed a desire to have a
> chance to look at that architecture.  Other times, however, it seemed to
> us that a requirements document or architecture document represented the
> thinking within a single working group. There, it didn't seem like
> departing from this guidance required as much community review.
> 
> I'm summarizing a fair bit of discussions, but enough different
> prospectives and examples were brought into the discussion that I feel
> confident that while we don't know how large the sample size was, it was
> more than just that IESG who believed there are times when architecture
> documents are intended to bind.
> 
> I know I've often found the informational RFC label inadequate to
> describe this sort of distinction and found that this distinction is
> important to capture.

This is one of the reasons that the updated boilerplate indicates
whether the document represents IETF consensus.

Russ