Re: Proposed IESG statement on referencing documents behind a paywall

["Bernie Volz (volz)" <[e-mail]>]

+1 ... something in the reference itself should indicate that the document (at time of writing) has restricted access.

That would also help all those involved and put less requirements on shepherds to confirm if all external references are publicly available (that might require disconnecting from a corporate vpn or not being on a corporate net to determine).

- Bernie

> On Jun 12, 2019, at 6:39 PM, Paul Kyzivat <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> IMO it would be better if the citation explicitly indicated that this document has a pay wall or limited access.
> 
>    Thanks,
>    Paul
> 
>> On 6/12/19 6:00 PM, Suresh Krishnan wrote:
>> Hi chairs,
>>   In the past we have dealt with a few drafts that have had normative references to paywalled documents and we have dealt with them on a case-by-case basis (usually during or after IETF last call). In order to get the working groups involved earlier in the process, the IESG is working on issuing a statement on how to deal with such drafts and we would greatly appreciate input from WG chairs on this topic. This is the proposed text of the statement
>> *** START TEXT ***
>> As described in Section 7.1 of RFC 2026, RFCs may have normative
>> references on external standards.
>> In some cases, however, those references are themselves not generally
>> available (for instance, they might be accessible only after paying
>> a fee). This can interfere both with the ability of implementers
>> to implement the protocol as well as with the ability of the IETF
>> community to review it.
>> In such cases:
>> 1. The WG MUST be explicitly informed of any such normative reference
>>  and the WG MUST reach consensus that it is acceptable. The
>>  document shepherd MUST include this information in the shepherd
>>  writeup.
>> 2. The reference MUST be explicitly noted as part of the IETF Last
>>  Call. If such a note is omitted, the last call MUST be repeated
>>  after including it.
>> *** END TEXT ***
>> Please go over this text and let me know if you have any concerns, comments, or additions by 2019/06/26.
>> Thanks
>> Suresh
>