OPEN ISSUE: Standards Track

[Brian E Carpenter]

Now, getting back from Mobile IP to the subject field...

Randy Bush wrote:
> 
> >>>> 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?
> >>
> >> how does this 'problem' do damage to
> >>
> >>    the ietf's goal is to produce high quality, relevant, and timely
> >>    standards for internet technology.
> >
> > well, what we currently have is for most purposes a single stage of
> > review.  perhaps we'd produce higher quality and more relevant documents
> > if we imposed some earlier review, and perhaps we'd get those documents
> > done in a more timely fashion if the early reviews identified problems
> > that are expensive (or time consuming) to fix if not discovered until
> > later.
> 
> i do not disagree with you.
> 
> but that is not at all what the problem statement above says to me
> it seems to say that
>   o the bar is too high

Which I simply don't agree to, after my experience as a WG Chair
shepherding documents to PS. We should *not* be applying rubber
stamps more easily. There are enough bugs in PS documents to satisfy
anybody.

>   o there is insufficient differentiation between ps, ds, and fs
> with which i disagree

I agree there is enough differentiation - the problem is that
fs is too strongly differentiated, so nobody bothers. That's why
I propose to munge ds and fs into a single grade.

Make it simpler. Never make it more complicated.

   Brian