Re: [TICTOC] [art] [Ntp] [Sedate] [Cbor] Two specifications on timestamps nearing WGLC

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

> I've been reading this thread for a while now. It seems to me that if a document from any organization is not publicly available then it shouldn't be referenced or used at all in the IETF standards process.

I think this is a position that most of us share.
(There are occasional exceptions; I’m not going to elaborate here, but Max Weber explained the issue in 1919 using the terms “Gesinnungsethik” and “Verantwortungsethik”.)

> If that organization wants the IETF to use it then it needs to make it publicly available for free.

That, however, is not very realistic.
We depend on tons of specifications that aren’t available for free.
(For example, NTP/TICTOC make a lot of use of IEEE 1588.)

> It's okay if someone needs to negotiate that but it's a waste of time for most people otherwise.

Well, this has to be carefully weighed; there is no one size fits all here.

In this particular case one of the points of publishing RFC 3339 was to make a profile of ISO 8601 publicly (and freely) available.  However, some salt was added (the -00:00) that turned out to lead to practical difficulties interoperating with actual implementations of ISO 8601, and that’s where we are.

> I also don't see why the NTP/TICTOC WG is involved in any of this discussion as we only deal with UTC and timezones and offsets from timezones is irrelevant for the group.

Indeed, the relationship is fleeting, but there was some indication that NTPv5 will take into account the needs of certain environments where timezone offsets need to be considered (or are not even known).

(My request was to have the discussion on art@, but I already knew that such a request never works.)

Grüße, Carsten