OPEN ISSUE: Standards Track

[Brian E Carpenter]

John, you're correct, but the fact is that viewed from the outside,
the set of RFCs looks like a shambles, and in terms of maintaining
our position as *the* Internet standards body, we'd better clear
that up. I think it is a serious problem, in terms of persuading the
industry as a whole that the IETF is doing a good enough job to
recieve the support we need.

So it needs to be on the list, if not at the top of the list.

   Brian

john.loughney at nokia.com wrote:
> 
> Hi Spencer,
> 
> > >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?]
> >
> > We're hearing proposed solutions to this problem, so it looks like there
> > are folks who agree that it's a problem.
> >
> > Are there folks who DON'T agree that this is a problem?
> 
> OK, I'll bite.  This may be a problem, but I don't see this problem
> as being on the critical path of problems we should solve. I am not sure
> how changing the above will help us produce useful & timely standards.
> 
> The reason I say this is because other organizations, companies & marketers
> are already quite happy to take IETF drafts into use, even if these have
> no permanent status.
> 
> I would not be opposed to cleaning up our standards track process, because
> I think it would be useful - but I see this a smaller problem as compared
> to some others ...
> 
> John
> 
> PS - on a related note, does anyone think it could be useful to try to make
> Experimental RFCs less of a second-class citizen?  My feeling is that
> there is some work we may not want to completely embrace with a standards
> designation, but something that lets folks go out & trial things and
> come back with their findings (note - this comment implies that there
> are those who think the label 'Experimental' is almost as bad as sending
> something to the IRTF!)