OPEN ISSUE: Standards Track

Brian E Carpenter brian at hursley.ibm.com
Fri May 16 16:22:31 CEST 2003


Firstly, yes it's a problem.

Secondly, this is a case where I think a simple first step may
help quite a bit: simply merge Draft Standard and Standard
into a single class, called Standard,  but with the criteria
now used for Draft Standard. 

Arguments: remove a process step that we basically never use,
and make the step up from Proposed Standard worth the trouble.

On James' point about Internet Drafts, maybe we could use a
little clarification in the WG procedures, but the main point
is to require a WG consensus before declaring a draft to be
a WG draft. If that hasn't been happening, it's more of a WG
Chair training issue than anything else.

   Brian

James Kempf wrote:
> 
> Margaret,
> 
> I've felt for some time that there is a need for a change in this
> area, but this analysis leaves out the issue of Working Group drafts,
> which I think is a critical component. Right now, they have grey area
> status. I've seen drafts move from individual contribution to Working
> Group status only because nobody on the mailing list spoke up when the
> Working Group chair put out the question about whether a draft should
> move to Working Group status or not. Many vendors start implementing
> when something becomes a Working Group draft, since realistically,
> they view that move as entry into the standardization process,
> regardless of what IETF's process RFCs say about it.
> 
> Arguments have been made on this list that we should not touch the
> current Proposed/Draft distinction, and I agree that the distinction
> is useful even if Proposed is treated as "standard" by vendors for all
> practical purposes (Full Standard, however, is largely useless except
> as a historical distinction). However, I think some attention is
> needed to how a draft becomes a Working Group draft. Perhaps that move
> is when a preliminary review is made on the design, so that movement
> to Working Group draft status does not happen for reasons that have
> nothing to do with the technical aspects of the design.
> 
>             jak
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Margaret Wasserman" <mrw at windriver.com>
> To: <problem-statement at alvestrand.no>
> Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2003 8:41 AM
> Subject: OPEN ISSUE: Standards Track
> 
> >
> > The process document current says:
> >
> > >There is also a more fundamental issue with the IETF's engineering
> > >practices.  Although our current standards track contains three
> > >levels of maturity (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard and Full
> > >Standard), we do not have sufficient differentiation regarding the
> > >quality and completeness of documents required at each stage.  The
> > >bar is set very high for publication at Proposed Standard, and very
> > >few documents advance beyond this stage. [OPEN ISSUE: Do we have
> > >IETF consensus that this is a problem?]
> >
> > I believe that this is a real issue, and that we need to make
> > some changes to our standards-track document processes to
> > address this.
> >
> > In particular, I think that we have inadvertently reached a
> > point where our proposed standards are treated as standards
> > by most of the industry.  I think that this was caused, in
> > part, by the high level of scrutiny that we place on documents
> > before we allowing them to reach this level.  This also leads
> > to a lack of motivation to move documents to draft standard,
> > where there interoperability will be demonstrated.
> >
> > In general, I think that this damages the quality and
> > integrity of the IETF standards-track documents, and we
> > should do something to fix it.
> >
> > Margaret
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >

-- 
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Brian E Carpenter 
Distinguished Engineer, Internet Standards & Technology, IBM 
On assignment at the IBM Zurich Laboratory, Switzerland


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