Re: Last Call: <draft-leiba-cotton-iana-5226bis-12.txt> (Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs) to Best Current Practice

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

Hi Stephen,
At 06:26 03-06-2016, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>I have a discuss on this document about one point where Barry and I
>have different recollections of the outcome of a discussion from a
>few years about about bis documents. As there were only a couple of
>people who took part in that discussion we figured it might help to
>get some more folks' opinions.
>
>The discuss point in question is:
>
>   "Section 8 says: "In no case is it reasonable to leave
>    documentation pointers to the obsoleted document for any
>    registries or registered items that are still in current
>    use." We had a nice big discussion about this back a few
>    years ago and there were two sides to the argument as I
>    recall.  On what basis can the authors now say that this is
>    quite so clear? The strong counter argument to this is that
>    developers do not start from IANA, they start from RFCs."
>
>The issue iirc is that if say RFCxxxx is obsoleting RFCyyyy
>must the IANA considerations in RFCxxxx say that all the
>registries that used point at RFCyyyy need to be updated to
>point at RFCxxxx? I don't think that needs to be done (but
>it can be done). I think Barry's position, and the text of
>the 5226bis draft say that it has to be done.
>
>What do you think?

I usually read the IANA registry to find the reference for 
registration procedure.  It is less work if the reference is to a 
document which contains relevant information.

Quoting text from Section 8:

   'If the registrations specify the original document as a reference,
    those registrations should be updated to point to the current (not
    obsolete) documentation for those items.  Usually, that will mean
    changing the reference to be the "bis" document.'

Is it useful to point to RFCyyyy when the information about the code 
point in RFCxxxx?  I don't think so.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy