OPEN ISSUE: Standards Track

[Juergen Schoenwaelder]

>>>>> Ted Lemon writes:

>> Right.. which is why "Experimental" would be a good one.  What we
>> want is a stable specification to get some limited testing and
>> deployment, *NOT* widespread use.

Ted> One slightly draconian way to fix this problem would be to
Ted> *require* that a spec go through experimental on the way to
Ted> proposed.  Then there can't be a stigma, because every spec does
Ted> it.  This would be a small inconvenience for trivial
Ted> specifications, but probably a big win for the bigger
Ted> specifications.  I don't think it would make sense to put all the
Ted> specs that are nearly at proposed through this extra step now,
Ted> but it might be a good thing to do for new drafts.

And then we kick out Draft (because Proposed is already pretty good
and few documents make two additional steps) and we end up with the
same three step process but just the steps have been renamed to match
today's common understanding. Since public perception is important,
this might actually not be such a bad idea and it is relatively cheap
to implement...

Of course, in a few years we will have raised the bar for Experimental.
So we need to introduce another new name. But luckily, since Draft has
then not been used for a while, we can simply introduce a new model
which has Draft->Proposed->Standard. :-)

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder		International University Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200 3587		P.O. Box 750 561, 28725 Bremen, Germany
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