Subject: WG Review: New IETF Standards Track (newtrk)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 13:48:40 -0500

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the General Area. The IESG 
has not made any determination as yet. The following description was submitted, 
and is provided for informational purposes only.  Please send your comments 
to the IESG mailing list ([email-masked]) by February 18th.

 New IETF Standards Track (newtrk)
 ---------------------------------

 Current Status: Proposed Working Group

 Description of Working Group:

 The problem working group found that many IETF participants feel that the
 current IETF hierarchy of Proposed, Draft and Full Standard maturity
 levels for specifications is no longer being used in the way that was
 envisioned when the stratification was originally proposed. In practice,
 the IETF currently has a one-step standards process. The goal of this
 working group is to agree on a revised IETF Standards Track, to replace
 the standards track described in RFC 2026. The working group will also
 decide on a process path forward.

 The disparity between the documented IETF standards process and what is
 used in practice can cause confusion on the part of those people or
 organizations that use IETF technologies. It has also led to a general
 disregard of the cautions in RFC 2026 on the appropriate deployment of
 IETF technologies described in Internet Drafts or Proposed Standard RFCs.

 The NewTrk working group is a follow on to the newtrk BOF held during the
 58th IETF Meeting in Minneapolis. That BOF was held as a result of the
 work of the problem working group.

 The sense of the room at the end of the newtrk BOF was that:
 1/ some change was needed to the IETF Standards Track
 2/ a revised standards track should have more than one stage
 3/ there should be some form of "working group snapshot," this might or
 might not be a formal stage on the standards track and might or might not
 be an archival publication
 4/ at least one stage should require multiple interoperable
 implementations of the technology to ensure document clarity
 5/ any revised standards track should include some type of "IPR hook" to
 keep the IETF and IESG out of the business of determining what IPR claims
 are legitimate and what licensing terms are fair.

 The goal of this working group is to agree on a revised IETF Standards
 Track, taking into consideration the above points, to replace the
 standards track described in RFC 2026. The working group will also decide
 on a process for making forward progress. Some of the possible paths being
 producing a revised version of RFC 2026 (and maybe other RFCs), producing
 a standalone document or documents that update parts of the existing RFCs
 or a mixture of the two. There may be other possibilities.

 The working group should also take into account other issues raised by the
 problem working group and during the newtrk BOF as needed.

 The deliberations of the working group will cover at least the following
 topics:
 a/ the standards track itself (number of stages, movement between maturity
 levels, working group snapshots, maintenance, IPR issues)
 b/ access to the standards track for individual submissions
 c/ non-standards track document categories including BCP, Informational,
 Experimental, and Historic and their relationship to the standards track
 d/ usability of the standards track (bug fixes, version numbers, grouping
 multiple specifications, and maybe deprecation)

 The NewTrk working group will coordinate its work with other reform
 activities currently underway in the IETF.