Subject: [urn] expert review procedures (CREF17)

From: Peter Saint-Andre - &yet <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 20:57:16 -0600

Regarding Section 8, CREF17 notes:

    We've had several discussions that suggest a somewhat different
    Expert Review model than is covered by RFC 5226.  Those discussions
    haven't gotten quite far enough to let us generate specific text, so
    the WG has work to do in this area.

John provided the following suggestions:

###

(1) We want Expert Review, with the guidance that now appears in
Sections 7 and 9, for namespaces that are not intended to be
standardized in/by the IETF.

(2) For namespaces intended for standardization, IETF Consensus
is necessary for registration although a preliminary expert
review may be helpful.

(3) While namespaces that are essentially overlays on identifier
standards produced and managed by other standards bodies, the
Expert Review process is intended more as an advisory and
coordination on rather than one or acceptance or rejection and
some sort of "fast track" procedure (and/or even a different
review process) may be in order.  I would hope we can explicitly
give the IESG some flexibility in those situations rather than
having to spell everything out in 2141bis.

(4) For namespaces that do not fall into categories (2) or (3),
we have a strong preference for registration, even poor-quality
registrations that only assure uniqueness of NIDs, over a slow
and/or onerous registration approval process that encourages use
of names without registration.

###

I think that's mostly right.

I do have a few questions and comments:

(a) I'm not sure exactly what it means for a URN namespace to be 
standardized within the IETF. I suppose we mean something like RFC 5031 
or the various IETF specifications that have established URNs for XML 
namespaces (say, RFC 6501 or RFC 6120). Some of these are in existing 
namespaces (e.g., urn:ietf:params:xml:ns....). Some of them are more 
novel (urn:sos in RFC 5031). To my mind, it might be fine to specify 
Expert Review for the namespaces themselves here, whereas the relevant 
specifications require IETF Consensus. I think this affects the order of 
events (e.g., preliminary expert review, IESG approval, then assignment 
/ registration) more than the registration policy itself.

(b) It seems sensible to have a "fast track" for other SDOs to register 
URN namespaces (similar to approaches we've taken or have talked about 
taking for things like media type registrations).

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://andyet.com/