Subject: RE: Working documents repository

From: "Casati, Alessio (Alessio)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 19:38:40 +0100

John,

You make very good points, but it happens
to a lot of the people engaged in fora such as this one
not to have time to devote to moving their expired
good ideas to a non std track RFC. 
It just happens that they may be in a rush to get
their product shipped, or in a rush for other
reasons. 

Also, there may be different reasons why a proposal may 
not be accepted, and not all of them may be documented in
a critical summary in a RFC :).

	[ snip  ]

>   -- Encouraging those who think that there are good ideas in
> about-to-expire I-Ds to move their significant content toward
> Informational RFC publication, with critical summaries of why
> the ideas didn't move forward as part of those RFCs.  I believe
> the IESG and RFC Editor should be much more welcoming of
> would-be Informational docs that contain careful critical
> analyses than of those that adopt an "we had this neat idea,
> look at us, aren't we clever" approach (I believe that, in fact,
> that preference has usually been applied correctly in the past).
> 
> Let's not bury ourselves in easy to use,
> potentially-destructive, archives just because we can.  The S/N
> ratio around here is bad enough already.
> 
> 
> 
Alessio

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:13:53 -0400

--On Wednesday, 18 August, 1999, 19:38 +0100 "Casati, Alessio

> their product shipped, or in a rush for other

I accept that.  In many cases, reasons like "get the product
shipped and never get around to coming back and finishing the
doc" represents a decision that the idea really wasn't
important.  As I-D authors, they ought to be able to make that
decision.   I've let a lot of things I thought were good ideas
slip into obscurity over the years, and regret some of it.  But
one makes decisions about these things and lives with them and
I'm not certain that having others decide that everything I do
gets archived in a readily-accessible way -- and hence, that I'd
better prepare every writing to publication/archival quality--
helps me, the world, or the IETF.

If one believes in any sort of intellectual property rights,
then the right to have something quietly disappear except when
needed in a legal proceeding or for some other compelling
purpose ought to be one of them.

    john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:13:53 -0400

john