Subject: Re: A perspective on the FYI RFC Publication Process

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 14:07:26 -0700 (MST)

> From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>

> ...
> >Given its scarcity, why should the IETF spend its "person power" on
> >anything that the IETF is "just not interested in"?  Why should standards
> >track documents wait behind irrelevant (to the IETF) documents for the
> >attention of the IESG or the RFC Editor?  Why should the IETF pay to edit
> >or publish every random document from every random person who wants the
> >cachet of being an RFC author?  
>
> I think the issue here is that there are lots of folks who would like the
> cachet of having published an RFC, and having an RFC that documents their
> work or ideas. That is not bad; consider that some random documents, like
> RFC 970, have identified and explored significant problems, and others,
> like RFC 950, have proposed ideas that eventually got incorporated into the
> base architecture. Ideas are good things, even if they are not standards,
> and even if they turn out to not be the best ideas.

That is good and true in any small or medium sized, homogeous,
technical organization, as the IETF once was.

> What has become problematic is people using that process to circumvent the
> working group process, ....

That's one problem, but I do not think it captures the difficulty that
started this discussion.  The people involved do not and did not think
they were circumventing anything.   No marketeer worth paying is able
to understand that their wonderful Technology is rationally considered
something else by others who are not competators.

As someone else said, the value of any publication today is in the editing,
in what does not get published.  10 years ago or even 5 years ago, the
IETF was small and homogeneous, and needed much less filtering.  The value
of the RFC series is that so far it is not quite the same as the stream
of inter-ad filler in a trade rag.

> ...
> money; that wasn't true two months ago) sends documents mailed to it to the
> IESG for review prior to publication.
>
> Generally, the result is a comment to the RFC Editor along the lines of
> ...

I am very uncomfortable with the IESG, IAB, or RFC Editor acting in such
a fashion except on documents that are related to the concensus of a
working group (perhaps including minority reports arguing against the
concensus).  Such extensive work on non-working group documents results
in a chimera of traded rag crossed with an accredited standards
organization and having ambitions to being a real (e.g. referees) journal.
The world does not need another one of those; the IEEE and ACM publish
plenty.

> ...
> During our review, we frequently make comments back to the author along the
> lines of "how about if you identify your company in the title", "have you
> thought about management or security?", ...

No, I'm wrong.  The organization you're describing is not a traded rag+ITU
group+ACM journal, but all of those plus a canonical (as in ecclesiastical)
court.  (Never mind that I would probably agree with all of the judgements
of this court.)

> I think it's important for all to understand that the ADs give first
> priority to looking at the documents that the working groups have sent us,
> and look over other submissions in their copious spare time. We do try to
> be timely, but individual submissions are not our highest priority, and are
> generally reviewed by a small subset of the Area Directors rather than
> getting full IESG review. So this type of stuff is not holding up other
> more pressing work.

That is clearly false.  Never mind that just maintaining the queue of low
priority submissions and responding to questions about why they have not
been published yet takes time.  The policy of accepting random documents
has resulted in the recent protest, and that dealing with that protest
will and has consumed time that would have been better spent elsewhere.

> As a practical suggestion: if you are worried about the IESG reviews, one
> thing that you can do is offer your reviewing services to the various Area
> Directors. You can either drop a note to the relevant ADs for subjects
> you'd be willing to be involved in, or drop a note to [email-masked] stating
> what sorts of documents you would be willing to help out with.

As long as the IAB or the IESG are willing to even read documents from 
elsewhere, there will be complaints that you are an evil, anti-competative
conspiracy not acting fast enough on new Technology.  The IETF is too
large and too powerful to have to luxury of the old generous, informal ways.

I don't know which will happen first, some outfit going to court because
enough, or because some other outfit's was reviewed and given a number
too fast.  I bet one or the other happens pretty soon.  Protestations that
Informational RFCs are weightless won't carry much weight, especially
given public statements from IETF officials about the care they exercise
in reviewing Informational RFCs.  I bet that the next person won't write
100's of lines of protest, but will have a lawyer do it.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 23:20:39 +0000 (GMT)

On Thu, 12 Nov 1998, Vernon Schryver wrote:

> in what does not get published.

Not just editing. There's a lot to be said in favour of having an
_independent_ editor.

That independence goes with accountability - not going back and
rewriting the archives or the standards to suit current practice, and
providing a permanent distributed archive of material that can be
extended and built on; the strong point of the RFCs. 

> 10 years ago or even 5 years ago, the

Well, since I couldn't help noticing the FYI in the subject line...
...have you looked at the more recent newbie intros in the FYI RFC
series such as:
RFC 2150
draft-ietf-uswg-fyi4-00.txt
? These do look quite similar to trade rag intros-to-the-internet to
me. (How many new users will begin by reading RFCs? How quickly will
this material date? hint: Floppy Drives are mentioned, and half the
URLs in 2150 are broken already; that should have been issued as
historic.) 

> in reviewing Informational RFCs. 

I have to disagree. Being able to say that an informational RFC is
roughly equivalent to RFC 2150 et al in how it is regarded is IMO a
pretty damning indictment of the whole category, but that's a
smallminded technical, rather than a smallminded legal, viewpoint.

2150 may be informational, but then so is my shopping list. It's   
simply not at all useful as an RFC, even if it _did_ go through a  
working group. What next? an RFC introducing and explaining various
security standards and their browser implementations as an
introduction to safe online shopping experiences for the masses?

(This isn't to say that RFC 2150 or the others in that FYI series are
at all useless; I've read many poorer and more misleading
introductions - elsewhere.  But the ideas in them can't be extended,
built on or used towards implementing computer-computer communication
standards in any way, which is a key point of the useful RFCs.)

> The policy of accepting random documents has resulted in the recent
> protest, and that dealing with that protest will and has consumed
> time that would have been better spent elsewhere. 

Avoiding accepting random documents by insisting that a working group
to be set up for submission of documents will merely lead to the
creation of random working groups and death by committee - and the
lone individual inside an organisation making an effort to get their
vendor protocol documented publically gets sidelined. 

Editorial focus in saying what you won't accept, without going through
due process, might be useful. After all, how much consideration does
an editor have to give the slush pile of unsolicited submissions? 

L.

<[email-masked]>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 23:20:39 +0000 (GMT)

L.

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 08:22:42 +0000

At 02:07 PM 11/12/98 -0700, Vernon Schryver wrote:
>working group

I don't think the output of working groups, regardless of intended status,
is under discussion. I think we're talking about random documents folks
send in. So you're saying that you are uncomfortable with the IESG advising
the RFC Editor on what is to be published as an RFC? Or are you saying that
you're uncomfortable with the RFC Editor publishing non-working-group
documents?

>large and too powerful to have to luxury of the old generous, informal ways.

sigh. But I like being generous and informal :^( I can be a faceless
burocrat, but I can probably find a clerk in a passport office that can do
that job.

In essence, I think you are advocating that the only output of the IETF is
documents that result from working groups, and that all RFCs henceforth
should be of that origin. Am I correct?

If so, then I submit that you might agree with a comment which has been
made in poised/poisson for quite a while: that we need to have a separation
in document series. Documents which result from working groups are one kind
of document (exactly what to call them I'll leave to another note), and
documents that come from elsewhere are something else (exactly what to call
them, and by what process they occur, I'll leave to another note). Am I
correct?

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 08:22:42 +0000

---

From: April Marine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 13:53:20 -0800 (PST)

I'm a bit late in throwing 2 cents in here, but since my comment is not
time-dependant perhaps that won't matter.

I was happy to see this comment on the FYIs as it gives me a chance to
address a very common misunderstanding about these docs.  Rarely do I get
such a good excuse to expound to the whole list!

> URLs in 2150 are broken already; that should have been issued as

(Actually, the comment refers to the ID mentioned and to RFC 2150 as
examples.)

First, most FYIs come from the User Services Area.  We are painfully aware
that users don't really read RFCs.  The USV area actually tries to play to
an audience of those who support users.  In other words, it's more of a
second-level support service (if "service" is the right term).   Many FYIs
were written so that user support services could have "authoritative"
documentation that they could freely distribute or re-use, lessening the
amount of repetitive work we all have to do.

Second, how quickly will this material date?  Too darn quickly!
Technically, USV is supposed to keep updating the FYI documents.  FYI 4,
for example, has been published about 3 times already and there is a new
draft of it.  FYI 4 is a new user document and we had long discussions
about whether or not we should go to the effort of updating it given
that, as is mentioned, there are SO many other intro docs more readily
available.  The reason we finally decided to go ahead and iterate it was
because we still get requests to reprint the RFC!  There are people around
the world who find these documents useful and we have to keep in mind that
the IETF has a worldwide audience.  Since there is a "market" for the
document, we felt obligated to make sure the information was as accurate
as we could make it today.

Finally, USV considers itself at a transition point.  Nobody wants to
waste time (volunteer time, I might add) writing docs no one will read or
that will go out of date yesterday.  We are currently writing one document
to list all the FYI RFCs that we consider both out of date and not worth
updating.  (This is to let people know that we ourselves are aware that
some info is not worthwhile using at this point.) See
draft-ietf-uswg-historic-00.txt, although I don't think that list will be
the final final one.

FYIs were conceived as "living documents" before the Web was prevalent.
Given new tools today, we are working toward updating our approach to what
information we support and how we publish it.  

And we *always* appreciate help! :-)

regards,
April Marine

-------------------------------------------------------------------
April Marine			1-650-604-0762  --> me
GLOBE Program			1-800-858-9947  --> GLOBE Help Desk
(Raytheon ITSS)			[email-masked]
NASA Ames Research Center, MS 204/14, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000
(and IETF User Services Area Director http://archimedes.nasa.gov/usv/)

---

From: April Marine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 13:53:20 -0800 (PST)

regards,
April Marine

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 12:57:31 +0000 (GMT)

> amount of repetitive work we all have to do.

Expecting user support services to rely on this "authoritative" slant
when handing the Word of God down to the masses is somewhat at odds
with the "it's only informational" attitude espoused by the
standards-track types - hence the need for clearer separation of the
two strands IMO.

> that will go out of date yesterday. 

Actually, you've just described all journalists and authors. But they
get paid for it. 

L.

Why am I thinking that USV should transition to an 'RFCs for Dummies'
book/online document?

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 12:57:31 +0000 (GMT)

L.

---

From: April Marine <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 08:17:17 -0800 (PST)

> when handing the Word of God down to the masses is somewhat at odds

Oh, didn't mean to give this Word of God impression.  Basically, however,
I do feel that if the IETF publishes something, informational or whatever,
people should be able to trust that the information was correct when it
was written.

> Actually, you've just described all journalists and authors. But they

And that makes all the difference. :-)

I'm not against devising some alternative/addition/whatever to make the
RFC series clearer.  We do need to keep in mind that the current series
has several audiences, and what one might find useful, another might not.
It's a tough problem.

April

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From: April Marine <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 08:17:17 -0800 (PST)

April