One document matched: draft-loughney-newtrk-one-size-fits-all-00.txt
Network Working Group J. Loughney
Internet-Draft Nokia
Expires: January 12, 2006 S. Dawkins
Futurewei
July 11, 2005
A Single-Stage Standards Process
draft-loughney-newtrk-one-size-fits-all-00
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
Abstract
This document proposes several changes of principle to the Internet
standards process, specifically a reduction from three stages to a
single stage in the standards track. This does not effect the
Informational, Experimental or BCP designations.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Stage 1: IETF-Approved Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. No higher stages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. No timing rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. No 'down references' within IETF-Approved Standards . . . . . 4
6. The STD designation, and updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. Interoperability Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
8. Transitional arrangements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
9. Not excluded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
10. Housekeeping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
11. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
12. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
13. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
14. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . 8
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1. Introduction
This document proposes several changes of principle to the Internet
standards process defined in [1].
The background for this proposal is the published analysis of
problems in the IETF [2], various discussions in the IETF's "New IETF
Standards Track Discussion" (newtrk) working group, various largely
expired drafts, and the authors' personal experiences. It has little
claim to originality (see Acknowledgements).
The problems tackled by this proposal are those of clumsiness in the
three-stage standards process, and related clumsiness in the clarity
and useability of IETF standards. Additionally, this draft proposes
'truth in advertising' with respect to how the IETF manages the
standardization process in most cases. Working Groups are generally
chartered to develop standards and then close down once the their
charter is fufilled. Only a handfull of Working Groups contain any
references to progressing documents Draft or Full Standard status.
The IESG does not enforce section 6.2 of [1], which states that the
IESG should review the status of any standard that has not reached
Internet Standard status and has remained unchanged for 24 months.
This draft is deliberately short on rationale and explanation - the
interested reader should study the above references and discussions
carefully. Should readers require additional rationale, the authors
may add text to future revisions. Additionally, a small analysis of
the current status of the RFC Index shows that there are 66 Full
Standards, which includes 10 that are obsoleted, resulting in 56 Full
Stanards. 91 Draft Standards which includes 37 that are obsoleted,
resulting in 54 Draft Standards. Finally, there are 838 proposed
standards, which includes 227 that are obsoleted, resulting in 611
Proposed Standards. Ensuring that all the Proposed Standards
progress up the Standards Track would seem to be a large task.
2. Stage 1: IETF-Approved Standard
This is exactly as described for "Proposed Standard" in [1].
3. No higher stages
The higher stages, "Draft Standard" and "Standard", are simply
abolished. These stages are achieved by so few specifications that
there is no justification for keeping them, and there is nothing
negative about "IETF-Approved Standard" as the final state. Should
revisions be required, the document can be resubmitted as an Internet
Draft and be assigned a new RFC number upon document approval. The
authors note that this roughly corresponds to the current process in
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practice.
4. No timing rules
Since there is no higher stage, all text requiring periodic reviews
will be removed from the replacement for [1].
This draft is deliberately short on rationale and explanation - the
interested reader should study the above references and discussions
carefully. Should readers require additional rationale, the authors
may add text to future revisions.
5. No 'down references' within IETF-Approved Standards
Since all IETF-Approved Standards are at the same stage of maturity,
there is no concept of specifications at a higher stage referencing
specifications at a lower stage. (It is not proposed to allow down
references to Internet-Drafts.)
6. The STD designation, and updates
Presently, an STD designation and number is only given to a document
(or document set) at the full Standard level. This can cause extreme
confusion when a full Standard is technically obsoleted by a Proposed
Standard. What is an implementer to do? What documents should be
normatively referenced by other organizations?
One option is to simply abolish the STD designation, which is little
used anyway.
The alternative is to assign the STD designation (and number) to a
IETF-Approved Standard document, or set of IETF-Approved Standard
documents which are related. In any case, this function (assigning
documents to specific STD designations) would be an IETF (WG or IESG)
matter and not an RFC Editor action as today.
7. Interoperability Reports
Although only a minority of IETF standards-track specifications have
achieved Draft Standard or Internet Standard status, interoperability
reports have been provided for specifications that have achieved this
status. Knowing that a protocol specification is clear enough to
allow interoperable implementations is valuable. It is not our
intention to ignore valuable information.
The IETF community is encouraged to continue to perform
interoperability testing, and to report results for this testing, so
we need a place to report these results. At this time,
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interoperability reports are provided to the IESG and are available
from http://www.ietf.org/IESG/implementation.html. One alternative
would be to include interoperability reports as part of an ISD [3],
but the current practice meets this need.
Again, the authors note that the IETF does not manage or certify
interoperability testing of its standards. The IETF relies on
interoperability reports from the community. This document in no way
changes this, it simply decouples document status from
interoperability reports.
8. Transitional arrangements
On the day these changes enter service, all existing standards-track
RFCs would be automatically reclassified as IETF-Approved Standard
RFCs. Corresponding changes would be made to the RFC Index and
various features of the RFC Editor site and any other RFC
repositories displaying the status of RFCs.
If and only if the STD designation is retained, all existing STD
designations will be applied as follows:
1. If the old Standard has not been obsoleted, it is now an IS with
the same STD designation.
2. If the old Standard has been obsoleted, the STD designation goes
to the document(s) that obsoleted it.
3. If the old Standard has been updated, the STD designation is
added to the document(s) that updated it.
4. The IESG would designate a team or teams to rapidly classify all
standards-track documents not assigned an STD designation by the
above process into new STD designations.
(If the STD designation is abolished, these steps would be
unnecessary, but various cleanings up of the RFC Index and the RFC
Editor web site would be needed to remove all references to STD.)
9. Not excluded
The above changes have been constructed in such a way that they do
not exclude the notions of WG Snapshots (drafts declared to be in a
stable state by the WG), Stable Snapshots (drafts declared to be in a
stable state with IESG agreement) or Internet Standards Documentation
(ISDs, external descriptors of a set of RFCs as a single
standard)[3].
10. Housekeeping
Obviously, [1] will need considerable editing in addition to the
above changes, for example to remove the intellectual property
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material which is already obsolete. Also, [4], which defined the STD
designation, should be obsoleted. (Even if the STD designation is
retained, it should be fully described in the replacement for [1].)
An unrelated housekeeping item is to clarify that, occasionally, the
IESG may decide to approve a document for immediate publication as
Historic (rather than Informational), when it is desired to publish
it for the record but it is already overtaken by events.
11. Security Considerations
This document does not directly affect the security of the Internet.
12. IANA Considerations
This document requests no action by the IANA.
13. Acknowledgements
Although this document proposes a single stage standards track, it
draws heavily from previous two-stage proposals by Spencer Dawkins,
Charlie Perkins, Dave Crocker, Scott Bradner, and Brian Carpenter,
and discussions of those proposals in the Newtrk working group.
This document was produced using the xml2rfc tool[5].
14. Informative References
[1] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3",
BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
[2] Davies, E., "IETF Problem Statement", RFC 3774, May 2004.
[3] Klensin, J. and J. Loughney, "Internet Standards Documentation
(ISDs)", draft-ietf-newtrk-repurposing-isd-03 (work in
progress), April 2005.
[4] Postel, J., "Introduction to the STD Notes", RFC 1311,
March 1992.
[5] Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629,
June 1999.
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Authors' Addresses
John Loughney
Nokia
Itamerenkatu 11-13
Helsinki, 00180
Finland
Phone: +358504836242
Email: john.loughney@nokia.com
Spencer Dawkins
Futurewei Technologies
1547 Rivercrest Blvd.
Allen, TX 75002
USA
Phone: +1 469 229 5397
Email: spencer@mcsr-labs.org
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