Subject: BOUNCE [email-masked]: Admin request of type /\buns\w*b/i at line 7 (fwd)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 10:17:37 -0500 (EST)

Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 16:05:37 -0500
To: "James V. Luciani" <[email-masked]>,
        Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>,
        "Harrington, David" <[email-masked]>,
        "'Kurt D. Zeilenga'" <[email-masked]>
From: Frank Kastenholz <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Where's the code (was: Input solicited: IETF problem
  pinpointing at the plenary?)
Cc: [email-masked]

At 11:27 PM 10/30/2002 -0500, James V. Luciani wrote:
>Don't know if this is clawing back up or not but...
>Seems most folks think Internet Draft to draft standard transition does not
>require implementation (certainly that is how things are written
>now).  However, if some folks feel sufficiently strongly that there is a
>bug in this then perhaps alternative designation for when the draft is
>"unstable" versus when it is in "tweaking" mode (not subject to substantive
>change but flawed and yet fixable) is what is needed.  We could overload
>yet another set of semantics and delineate this difference as occurring
>when a doc goes from individual submission to WG doc or come up with some
>completely different designation altogether.  At any rate,  you need to
>give vendors a shot at knowing that the spec they are developing to is
>moderately stable (for some "#define moderate" and some "#define stable").

won't that simply shift the problem?
i mean, we now say that only RFCs are "stable" or
even "moderately stable". so vendors implement
to internet-drafts that are not stable. if we
say that "this" ID is moderately stable, then
vendors will simply start implementing to some
rev of the ID before the moderately stable one.

also, i have seen Internet Drafts that had gone
through all the stages and were on the IESG's
plate when the WG had A Brilliant Idea and pulled
the ID back and made major changes to things. This
completely shatters the notion of "stable".
Of course, we could say that once it's marked as
"stable" then these sorts of changes can't be made.
So what's the difference between a "stable ID" and
an RFC then?