Document Series

[Joel M. Halpern]

[Somewhere on the border between problems and solutions...]

While I like the goal Pete describes, I am afraid that the reality does not 
match.

The last hyphen line suggests ignoring the screams of horror when we change 
PS.  I have currently observed working groups that have been resist to 
(sometimes unable to) changing working group internet drafts due to 
complaints about deployment.  I therefore tend to be doubtful of our 
ability in the current structure to ignore those screams.

While I am not happy with declaring most of our work experimental, the 
suggestion on this list would at least make it clear that things can be 
changed.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

At 03:09 PM 6/4/2003 -0500, Pete Resnick wrote:
>Wouldn't it make more sense to:
>
>- Leave our written processes exactly the way they are;
>- *Lower* the bar on PS back to what it was intended to be, get PS's out 
>early, and do real interop testing early in the process;
>- Start putting a boilerplate on PS RFC's which says "OK, now we really 
>mean it; this isn't ready for prime time!"
>- Ignore all screams of horror when we significantly change a 
>specification that is at PS, publish the changed spec as a new PS and 
>change the old PS to Historic, and say "I told you so".
>
>I'm not being facetious. Or at least, I'm not being totally facetious. If 
>the problem we are addressing is really, "Industry expects more out of PS 
>than we intended", the problem can be addressed by either changing our 
>interpretation of PS to meet industry expectations, or by changing 
>industry expectations.