Re: [Tools-discuss] Expiry Doctrine (Re: Expired draft on the w.g. status pages [was Re: disappearing IDs on www.ietf.org])

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

> Drafts are drafts unless they’re not. 

We have learned for a few decades that there are multiple perspectives on that, none of which can be ignored.  A patent lawyer has a different perspective than a software archeologist (a.k.a. implementer) than a standards developer.

> Drafts expire unless they don’t. 

Again, there are different perspectives.
Saying your’s is the only one we should care about because that is how we SHOULD work, while we DO work differently, is the classic case of process confabulation.

Having labels 

> Treating them as artifacts in need of a stable reference means they’re not drafts anymore. They’re just versions. 

They are versions of drafts!

> So assign RFC numbers when they’re initially submitted and allow rev numbers or don’t. 

Nonsense.  The label “RFC” is meaningful and should only be used for documents that are no longer “drafts”.

> But if they’re not drafts, again we should just publish them to arXiv and skip all the irrelevant IETF mechanism. 

Nonsense.  The IETF process is useful in producing labels such as “RFC”, “Standards Track”, “obsoletes”, “Updates”, etc.

What’s the point of drawing these strawmen?

Grüße, Carsten