Re: Alissa Cooper's Discuss on draft-ietf-bfd-yang-16: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

[Alissa Cooper <[e-mail]>]

> On Jul 3, 2018, at 6:06 PM, Ted Hardie <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> A brief note, in-line.
> 
> On Tue, Jul 3, 2018 at 2:18 PM, Alissa Cooper <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> Alissa Cooper has entered the following ballot position for
> draft-ietf-bfd-yang-16: Discuss
> 
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> 
> Please refer to https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/discuss-criteria.html <https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/discuss-criteria.html>
> for more information about IESG DISCUSS and COMMENT positions.
> 
> 
> The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-bfd-yang/ <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-bfd-yang/>
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> DISCUSS:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I will apologize in advance because this document may be sort of a casualty of
> this DISCUSS. I should have raised my point below at least two years ago if not
> four years ago when the first iana-* YANG module was registered, but the
> thought did not occur to me until now.
> 
> It gives me some pause to see the name "iana" embedded in the file name, module
> name, namespace, and prefix of the module being defined in Sec. 2.12. I realize
> there is precedent here, but I question whether tying these kinds of modules
> specifically to IANA as the protocol parameter registry operator by name puts
> them on the most stable deployment footing under all possible circumstances. I
> am personally pleased as punch with the service we get from IANA, but that
> doesn't mean "IANA" will always be the name of the registry operator.
> 
> Just as a point of clarification, I believe that the name of the operator at the moment is PTI, a subsidiary of ICANN (Public Technical Identifiers, pti.icann.org <http://pti.icann.org/>).
> 
> "IANA" as a trademark was assigned to the IETF Trust, see Exhibit B in this document:
> 
> https://trustee.ietf.org/documents/Assignment-Agreement-2016-09-30-Executed.pdf <https://trustee.ietf.org/documents/Assignment-Agreement-2016-09-30-Executed.pdf> 
>  
> If I understand correctly, that means that the IETF Trust would have to would have to do something surprising in order to make the use of "IANA" untenable in this context.  There may be good reasons outside of that to consider more descriptive names, but I am not seeing the same issue you do.  Can you explain further?

My point is that if the name is meant to signify “module that will be updated automatically when an existing registry is updated” it should have a name that describes that rather than “iana-.” If the operator of said registry is no longer named “iana” at some point in the future (or even now, as you point out), whether to change module names would probably depend on the level of confusion associated with having a misnomer. But even if existing “iana”-named modules don’t change, I’d rather not see more modules minted with such names going forward.

Alissa

> 
> thanks,
> 
> Ted
> 
> 
> 
> The more
> modules that get created with this embedding, the more of them that may need to
> change in the unlikely event that the name of the registry operator changes.
> Lots of RFCs would need to change too, but embedding the name extends the
> potential problem to the modules themselves.
> 
> It wasn't clear to me whether there is some ops-area-wide convention around the
> embedding of "iana" in the names of modules to be maintained by IANA. I don't
> see this specifically referenced in RFC 7950 or RFC 6020. So I'd like to
> discuss whether a different naming convention could be established and used in
> this document and others going forward.
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> COMMENT:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Some further questions on Sec. 2.12:
> 
> Looking back at the other RFCs that have defined YANG modules to be maintained
> by IANA (7224, 7317, 8294, 8348), they use two different postal addresses for
> ICANN. Why? Furthermore, is "ICANN" really the right contact name, or should it
> be PTI?
> 
> 
>