Subject: Re: I-D Action:draft-hoffman-tao4677bis-00.txt

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:50:44 +1300

>    Added sentences to section 8.1 explaining that BCPs and FYIs are sub-
>    series of Informational RFCs.  

Namely:

>    The sub-series of FYIs and
>    BCPs are comprised of "Informational documents" in the sense of the
>    enumeration above, with special tagging applied.

That's certainly true of the FYI series (which I believe the
RFC Editor regards as dormant today).

It absolutely is not true of the BCP series - they are
single-stage normative documents, and not a subset of
Informational documents. If there's text in RFC 2026 that
implies otherwise, I need to update draft-carpenter-rfc2026-changes
again.

    Brian

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:14:23 -0800

>implies otherwise, I need to update draft-carpenter-rfc2026-changes

Note that Section 8.1 (which currently doesn't mention BCPs at all, 
and thus the needed change) talks about "Informational documents", 
not "Informational RFCs". That might be too clever of a 
differentiation.

Would you be happier if the list above the text you quoted had seven 
entries instead of six, with "Best current practices (BCP) documents" 
as a new entry in the list?

Personally, I don't feel that RFC 2026 is clear enough on the status 
of BCPs, and we thus have BCPs whose meaning differs from what 2026 
says BCPs are for. I don't think we can change 2026 in a way that 
won't invalidate some BCPs.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:30:48 +1300

On 2008-01-18 13:14, Paul Hoffman wrote:
> Note that Section 8.1 (which currently doesn't mention BCPs at all, and
> thus the needed change) talks about "Informational documents", not
> "Informational RFCs". That might be too clever of a differentiation.
> 
> entries instead of six, with "Best current practices (BCP) documents" as
> a new entry in the list?

Yes, that would be fine.
> 
> Personally, I don't feel that RFC 2026 is clear enough on the status of
> BCPs, and we thus have BCPs whose meaning differs from what 2026 says
> BCPs are for. I don't think we can change 2026 in a way that won't
> invalidate some BCPs.

It is, however, clear that they are approved like single-stage standards,
with a required last-call and rough consensus, which doesn't apply
to Informationals.

You may want to check for consistency with RFC 4844 through 4846, too.

   Brian

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 01:35:36 +0100

Paul Hoffman skrev:
> and thus the needed change) talks about "Informational documents", not
I would.
> won't invalidate some BCPs. 
Sure we can. "A BCP is a document that is approved by the IESG as a
BCP". :-)

They are definitely not informational documents.

(I long ago proposed splitting the series into the two effective
subseries it has - "process documents" and "forcefully recommended
advice to operators/implementors" - but that obvious move is Just Too
Much Of A Hassle....)

                 Harald

---

From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 03:52:53 +0100

Harald Alvestrand wrote:
 
 [BCP}
> I long ago proposed splitting the series into the two effective
> advice to operators/implementors" - but that obvious move is Just
> Too Much Of A Hassle....

...it could be more straight forward than "BCPs listed in the
Procdoc ION" (or not).  

Brian mentioned about FYIs:
| which I believe the RFC Editor regards as dormant today

RFC 4949 is now FYI 36, replacing RFC 2828.  Is FYI simply a kind
of 'informational favourites' picked by the rfc-editor.org folks ?

About the TAO, I consider it as the "nice" or "social" version of
Procdoc, where Procdoc is the "emily postnews" or "marauder's map"
of the IETF for those who found that "nice" doesn't cut it.  

If the TAO tries to stay up to date with say the forever changing
boilerplates of IPR maybe it should be also an ION (like Procdoc).

The idea of IONs is to get official snapshots of changing details
in the standards process not relevant for the "Internet at large"
(incl. IANA), isn't it ?  

Or maybe TAO is the IETF "user manual" and public FAQ, while IONs
not limited to Procdoc are the "reference manual" for folks trying
to figure out why "user manual" and "implementation" are different.

 Frank

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:00:45 -0800

>to figure out why "user manual" and "implementation" are different.

Something along that line, yes. The Tao really should be an RFC, 
which means that it will go out of date regularly. Its intended 
audience is quite different than IETF regulars who would read IONs.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:13:06 -0500

> RFC Editor regards as dormant today).

For what it's worth, there's a document in the dnsop queue which the  
wg intends to send up the tree for publication as fyi, once past wg  
last call. So the series might be dormant today, but there's a  
reasonable chance it might snort in its sleep and roll over in due  
course.

Joe

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:48:03 +1300

On 2008-01-18 17:13, Joe Abley wrote:
> For what it's worth, there's a document in the dnsop queue which the wg
> intends to send up the tree for publication as fyi, once past wg last
> call. So the series might be dormant today, but there's a reasonable
> chance it might snort in its sleep and roll over in due course.

I've always wondered what the designation "for your information" adds
to an RFC that is already labelled "informational".

   Brian

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:59:20 -0500

> to an RFC that is already labelled "informational".

Me too. I hope to find out :-)

Joe

---

From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:24:16 +0100

Joe Abley wrote:
 
>> I've always wondered what the designation "for your information"
>> adds to an RFC that is already labelled "informational".
 
> Me too. I hope to find out :-)

Try FYI 1 = RFC 1150, but it doesn't exactly answer the question ;-)