Re: [Last-Call] Last Call: <draft-koster-rep-06.txt> (Robots Exclusion Protocol) to Informational RFC

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 4:59 PM John R Levine <[e-mail]> wrote:

> >> I'm uncomfortable leaving change control for a key interoperability
> >> mechanism in the search market in the hands of one competitor, yet
> blessing
> >> it as part of the IETF stream. I think the IETF as a whole should be
> >> uncomfortable with that too, given current competition enforcement
> trends.
>
> Putting on my trustee hat, I don't think this can be an IETF document
> without IETF change control.  RFC 5378 says
>
>        The right to produce
>     derivative works, in addition to translations, is required for all
>     IETF Standards Track documents and for most IETF non-Standards Track
>     documents.  There are two exceptions to this requirement: documents
>     describing proprietary technologies and documents that are
>     republications of the work of other standards organizations.
>
>
> I took that particular trustee hat off some time ago, but in my personal
opinion, I think you are construing this too narrowly.

One, this is not requesting a standards track document (if it were, the
language would be different, as has been discussed).   Second, the
penultimate paragraph and the ultimate paragraph of that same section go
into considerable additional detail on the motivations for permitting the
non-standards track case.   I believe that this document falls within
them.  I've already discussed with Mark why I think the first applies, but
I'll also note that there are aspects which are closer to the second case
than the first.  This RFC is a restatement of the work that was maintained
by Martijn at https://www.robotstxt.org/ for a couple of decades (
https://www.greenhills.co.uk/posts/robotstxt-25/ for a bit of history).  It
is in use by over 500 million websites, and having a stable, archival
reference would be a useful thing.  Making it available as an RFC does
that, and I hope you agree.

We could argue about whether robotstxt.org is an SDO or whether, if it is
not, whether Martijn is the owner of the specification (case 2 or case 1),
but I think that's not very productive.  We have this exception to deal
with cases where it is useful to get IETF review and approval of documents
which originated from outside and which serve the common interest.  We've
had the IETF review, and the specification has improved as a result.  Going
through with the rest of the process makes the most sense to me, but, as
I've reiterated, I think the standards track would also do so.

If you support that option, it might be useful to say so (obviously, not
with a Trustee hat on).

regards,

Ted



> Another possibility would be to move it to the Independent stream if Eliot
> agrees.
>
> Regards,
> John Levine, [e-mail], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
>