Subject: Re: Working documents repository

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 14:27:03 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Peter Deutsch <[email-masked]>

> ...
> The question then becomes "does it do more harm to preserve this
> material than to let it go away?" Personally, I'd hum for
> preservation...

Surely the issue is not preservation vs. destruction, but publication vs.
not publishing.  Just as with the mailinglists' archives, it would be
foolish to discard stuff that might figure in court cases when the IETF
would be destroying only the complete, authoritative records and not
incomplete, potentially improved, private copies.

Old I-D's could be available to individual historians and lawyers for
limited times (e.g. 6 weeks) and after application to the IESG for a
username and password.  That would keep J. Random Marketoon from claiming
compliance with an I-D, and not mentioning that it is #3 in the archive
on venera instead of the #97 in the active directory.

In any case, contrary to one suggestion today, for all of the reasons
that make it necessary to 'expire' I-D's, the IETF "MUST NOT" refer to
other organizations' repositories of expired I-D's.  Publishing the
location of other repositories would make the IETF's expirations moot.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 15:00:08 -0700

>compliance with an I-D, and not mentioning that it is #3 in the archive

There is always a tradeoff between openness/freedom, versus abuse.  To 
ensure less abuse is to engage is parentalism and/or less openness.

The approach you suggest smacks of excessive bureaucracy and overhead.

The marketplace is quite good at filtering out bogus products.  Let's rely 
on that mechanism, rather than introduce one of our own, particularly given 
the difficulties caused by our having extra barriers to access.

d/

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---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 23:24:09 +0100 (BST)

On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Vernon Schryver wrote:

> username and password.  

Your suggestion goes against the-open-inclusiveness-spirit-of-the-IETF.

What special qualifications/rights/level of cluefulness do historians
and lawyers have that permit this for them? Would you limit demand
based on, I don't know, ability to pay as clear demonstration of need,
say?

(If available infrastructure can't stretch to mailing list archives I
 can't see it stretching to something as fiendishly complex as a
 password system.)

> That would keep J. Random Marketoon from claiming compliance with an
> I-D, and not mentioning that it is #3 in the archive on venera
> instead of the #97 in the active directory.

Hardly. The people most likely to believe the claim would never check;
the people who would check would know where to look.

> location of other repositories would make the IETF's expirations moot.

Actually, having repositories of expired I-D's is arguably symptomatic
of abuse of the standards process. Linking to same is arguably
symptomatic of encouraging abuse of the standards process; if you
really thought the ideas in the draft were any good you'd have revised
the draft in accordance with review comments and resubmitted it. If
you thought your ideas were still good right now you'd be able to
point to a current internet-draft with your name on as evidence of
this. 

Persistence should lead to review with an explicit view to
publishing as an informational RFC - but this does lead to more
informational RFCs.

IMO forcibly beginning every RFC (and not just standards-track 'see
STD1' ones) with a boilerplate indicating it might be
obsoleted/updated and to see the index/summaries would IMO be a good
idea, since it helps prevents RFCs being read out of context. We
already put this on drafts with good reason:

    Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
    months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents
    at any time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as
    reference material or to cite them other than as "work in
    progress."

We need to stamp something like:

    This RFC document may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by later
    RFC documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this
    RFC document as a reference without citing its status as
    {Informational|Best Current Practice|whatever} and checking
    the current rfc-index for this RFC's current status.

Yes, it's blatantly obvious - to you. In a world where unpublished
material is widely available, clarity of implicit context is
increasingly important, and explicitly distinguishing the class and
validity of an RFC can't hurt.

L.

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