Subject: Re: Uneccesary slowness

From: Bruce Lilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 21:05:23 -0400

>  Date: 2005-05-14 20:22
>  From: Will McAfee <[email-masked]>

> I think the minimum time before a document can pass to another
> standards-track state is ridiculously long.

4 months (RFC 2026, sect. 6.2) != "ridiculously long"

> A two-page
> proposed standard can take an absolutely ridiculous amount of time to
> pass through!

I strongly suspect that there is no such thing.  A minimal Standards Track
RFC (headings, footers, title, boilerplate, normative reference to BCP 14,
minimal security considerations section, author's address, not to mention
actually saying something that is suitable for standardization) is likely
to be much longer than two pages.  Heck, a "hello, world" Informational RFC
would be two pages, what with boilerplate, etc.   A proper Proposed Standard
should include a list of conformance criteria, so that there is a clear
specification of what constitutes fully conforming, interoperable
implementations (which need to be documented for advancement to Draft).
Aside from those minimal considerations, even a trivial Proposed Standard is
likely to have several normative or informative references.  Add discussion
of issues outlined in BCPs 18, 22, 26, 61, 72, 82, RFCs 1958, 3426, 3429,
and probably several others depending on subject matter, and there is no way
that a Standards Track RFC can be as short as two pages.  Indeed, one of the
shortest Standards Track RFCs published to date (by page count) which has
anything resembling the currently mandated boilerplate is RFC 3912 (4 pages).
Note that the second paragraph of section 1 of RFC 3912 acknowledges that a
modern specification would have to address several design issues which in
fact are not addressed in that short document. 

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