Re: [RAI] RAI reorganization

["Spencer Dawkins" <[e-mail]>]

>> even if I would say  that sip developers  have to spend a  huge  amount 
>> of time and effort to get their tiny
>> new, and probably already implemented, sip extensions standardized:  if 
>> they success!
>> That's not the only cause, but it is one
>
> And the "tail end" delays and frustration are one part of that. Ever 
> longer dependency chains of drafts (examples that affect my own  drafts: 
> SIP outbound, now nearing four years since *ietf*-00, and  mDNS, stalled 
> indefinitely) are probably not exactly helpful.
>
> If there was a way to take a risk and simply allow "down references"  to 
> drafts that are technically complete, but wending their way through  the 
> IETF management chain, we'd be able to cut a year or two off the 
> publication delay in some cases.

In March 2004, Scott Bradner proposed "Stable Snapshots" (SSS), and Dave 
Crocker, Charlie Perkins and I proposed "Working Group Snapshots" (WGS). SSS 
and WGS did not differ much (great minds think alike, apparently).

At least WGSs were stable references that a working group could checkpoint 
for any reason, including "working group thinks we're through, publication 
is requested". The point was that the references were stable, so in the 
cases where it was appropriate to do so, they could be down-referenced in 
other documents.

The IESG at that time didn't pursue these proposals, but the IESG population 
will have almost completely "turned over" after IETF 74, so maybe it's time 
to think about this again.

Speaking only for myself about MEDIACTRL, we have three drafts that are 
"stable", but we're still collecting implementation reports (this is not a 
bad thing) on all three, so if WGS or the moral equivalent was available, we 
might consider checkpointing WGS all three drafts, instead of (1) leaving 
them hanging for a couple of IETF cycles as drafts-like-any-others, or (2) 
requesting publication as Proposed Standards, knowing that we may be doing 
"-bis" versions fairly quickly.

Historical URLs are available at

http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-dawkins-newtrk-wgs-00.txt

http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-bradner-ietf-stds-trk-01.txt

Thanks,

Spencer