Document Series

[Keith Moore]

> 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 don't think so.  

Part of the reason I don't think so is that I don't think industry pays
much attention to what we claim about a document, so even an explicit
"not ready for prime time" disclaimer wouldn't be terribly useful.

But basically I think our current maturity levels (regardless of what we
call them or claim about them) are not a good match either with industry
needs or with working group interests/energies/motivations. 

I assume that a revised set of maturity levels would have some stage
more-or-less equivalent to our current PS stage, and that it would
not have stages equivalent to DS or FS - but would replace these with
applicability statements and/or implementation notes.  And I expect that
the stage that was closest to the current PS stage would actually be a
bit higher bar than PS now, and that there would be some earlier stages
as prequesites to that stage (which to discourage deployment would
probably not be published as RFCs)

But of course it doesn't have to work out that way.  For now I'm merely
suggesting that we need to re-examine our document maturity stages to
see how well they serve our needs and the needs of our customers, and if
they don't, to consider changing them.