Subject: Errata [was on yam] Referencing 1652bis and update to RFC 5321/5322

From: Alessandro Vesely <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:57:08 +0200

On 30/Jun/10 17:52, Jari Arkko wrote:
> John  [Klensin],
>> and I'm keenly aware of the fact that
>> errata, even "approved" errata, do not constitute community
>> consensus documents, but,
>
> I am with you on that.

IMHO, this is a point that may be worth enhancing.  From a functional 
POV, it is not possible for users to vote, discuss, or subscribe to an 
erratum, a feature that current bug tracking tools offer out of the box.

In addition, an errata status of, say, "implementation mismatch" is 
missing.  It could be used to report that (some versions of) an 
implementation are not compliant on a specific detail.  I'm not saying 
the IETF should systematically track each and every implementation. 
However, accepting non-compliance reports is a means to track how much 
popularity specific parts of a protocol have gained.

 From a user-interface POV, it is difficult to realize that errata 
exist about a specific passage.  For example, background color, margin 
marks, or footnotes could be used to draw the reader's attention to 
existing errata.

> I do not believe the IESG is saying that everyone should be using errata
> from now on. There is certainly some frustration in the community and
> sometimes in some of my fellow ADs about the time it takes to produce an
> RFC, and that does sometimes lead people to not bother with doing it,
> relying on Internet drafts, errata, common sense, their own memories or
> their code base to reflect what the true protocol behaviour should be. I
> still think its better to publish RFCs. (And for the record, I do not
> believe it is that hard.)

Collecting consensus on specific changes --unbound from any charter or 
time-frame-- may help identifying which parts of which RFCs need a 
revision.

JM2C