Re: prerequisite for change (was Re: draft-housley-two-maturity-levels)

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On Jan 30, 2011, at 10:35 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 10:15:01AM -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
>>> 
>>> That's an argument for _no_ maturity levels, then, not for two.   
>> 
>> Is there an implicit assumption here that more standards (presumably of poorer quality) is a good thing?
> 
> Not on my part.  

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it was your assumption.  I do wonder if it's an assumption held by many in the discussion.

> I'm merely observing that, if the claim is that you
> can't alter deployed protocols, then there's no reason to say that we
> need two maturity levels, because in fact nothing will advance past
> the first stage anyway.

As far as I can tell, the principal reason any specifications move beyond Proposed is that they are widely deployed and their limitations become apparent.  So I think you can alter deployed protocols, but only if the protocols or their implementations are seen to be sufficiently broken.

(Which could lead one to conclude, from a perverse point-of-view, that some flaws should be left in at Proposed Standards so that they'll have to be fixed later, so that we can get more Draft and Full Standards published.)

Keith