Subject: Good deed before the holidays: Documents in REF state

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 19:43:07 -0800

Greetings,

now that the holiday season is looming nearby for many of us here in the 
Western world, it may be time to think of good deeds that you can do for 
your fellow IETFers, in following up and resolving some things that are 
holding up the publication of documents.

One of the things that leads to documents being stuck "forever" in the 
publishing process is the pesky issue of normative references - documents 
that must be read in order to understand a protocol well enough to 
implement it. The RFC Editor insists, justifiably, that such references be 
published no later than the referring document.

There are a few documents in the RFC Editor's queue, some of which have 
been there for a while.... you can recognize them by their REF state flag 
in <http://www.rfc-editor.org/queue.html>, or by their presence in the list 
below.

Before you take time off for the holiday season - perhaps you might spend a 
few minutes in looking at the list below and seeing which documents that 
YOU are responsible for that is held up because of a normative dependency - 
and try to figure out what happened to the other end of the references?

More information on each draft is, of course, available from the RFC 
Editor's URL above and from the I-D tracker.

Good luck!

                      Harald

REF          68.8 draft-ema-vpim-cb-02.txt
REF          60.0 draft-ietf-fax-service-v2-05.txt
REF          52.9 draft-ietf-tewg-te-metric-igp-02.txt
REF          52.9 draft-ietf-isis-ext-lsp-frags-02.txt
REF          50.7 draft-ietf-mpls-lsp-hierarchy-08.txt
REF          49.4 draft-ietf-mpls-bundle-04.txt
REF          42.8 draft-ietf-ipo-impairments-04.txt
REF          42.7 draft-ietf-midcom-protocol-eval-06.txt
REF          37.3 draft-ietf-opes-protocol-reqs-03.txt
REF          37.3 draft-ietf-opes-architecture-04.txt
REF          36.6 draft-ietf-sipping-reg-event-00.txt
REF          36.3 draft-ietf-ips-ifcp-14.txt
REF          36.3 draft-ietf-ips-fcovertcpip-12.txt
REF          34.9 draft-ietf-smime-symkeydist-09.txt
REF          32.8 draft-ietf-idwg-requirements-10.txt
REF          32.8 draft-ietf-idwg-beep-idxp-07.txt
REF          32.7 draft-ietf-policy-core-schema-16.txt
REF          28.3 draft-ietf-ips-security-19.txt
REF          26.6 draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-sonet-sdh-08.txt
REF          24.8 draft-ietf-ccamp-gmpls-architecture-07.txt
REF          22.6 draft-ietf-ips-iscsi-20.txt
REF          18.4 draft-ietf-provreg-epp-ext-03.txt
REF          10.8 draft-ietf-mmusic-sdpng-trans-04.txt
REF           9.7 draft-ietf-provreg-epp-tcp-06.txt
REF           9.1 draft-ietf-simple-winfo-package-05.txt
REF           9.1 draft-ietf-simple-winfo-format-04.txt
REF           9.1 draft-ietf-simple-presence-10.txt
REF           9.1 draft-ietf-provreg-epp-host-07.txt
REF           9.1 draft-ietf-provreg-epp-domain-07.txt
REF           9.1 draft-ietf-provreg-epp-contact-07.txt
REF           9.1 draft-ietf-provreg-epp-09.txt
REF           9.1 draft-ietf-printmib-mib-info-15.txt
REF           9.0 draft-ietf-mobileip-mipv6-ha-ipsec-06.txt
REF           9.0 draft-ietf-l3vpn-framework-00.txt
REF           4.5 draft-ietf-vpim-vpimv2r2-dur-03.txt
REF           4.5 draft-ietf-vpim-vpimv2r2-32k-03.txt
REF           4.5 draft-ietf-vpim-vpimv2r2-05.txt
REF           4.5 draft-ietf-vpim-address-03.txt
REF           4.1 draft-ietf-ldup-lcup-06.txt
REF           3.1 draft-mealling-iana-xmlns-registry-05.txt
REF           3.1 draft-ietf-smime-x400transport-09.txt
REF           2.0 draft-ietf-smime-x400wrap-09.txt
REF           2.0 draft-ietf-ieprep-ets-general-04.txt
REF           0.7 draft-ietf-secsh-dns-05.txt
REF           0.7 draft-ietf-impp-srv-04.txt
REF           0.7 draft-ietf-impp-pres-04.txt
REF           0.7 draft-ietf-impp-im-04.txt
REF           0.7 draft-ietf-impp-cpim-pidf-08.txt
REF           0.0 draft-ietf-sigtran-sctp-mib-10.txt
REF           0.0 draft-ietf-ipr-wg-guidelines-05.txt
REF           0.0 draft-ietf-ipr-submission-rights-08.txt

---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 08:33:14 +0200 (EET)

> Editor's URL above and from the I-D tracker.

Was there a particular reason for omitting a lot of *REALLY* delayed 
documents from the list?

E.g.

2002/05/06   draft-ietf-vpim-vpimv2r2-05.txt
REF          draft-vaudreuil-mdnbis-03.txt
G. Vaudreuil, G. Parsons
Voice Profile for Internet Mail - version 2
Bytes: 119017

(the latter is in "AD followup" mode).  Over 18 months waiting for 
references .. that's sweet.

(Note: it seems that at that stage, even splitting the references 
wasn't being done, which may be one source for this delay..)

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

---

From: Bernard Aboba <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 07:48:32 -0800 (PST)

And while we're on the subject, I'd suggest that a glance at those
documents suggests that many of the normative references are in fact
unnecessary.

It has been suggested by the RFC Editor that the IETF community could
benefit from education relating to the use of normative versus
non-normative references.  This seems like an idea that could result in a
large reduction in total publication delays without requiring any
modification to the standards process.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 10:02:20 -0800

> Voice Profile for Internet Mail - version 2

It's actually in the list, but for some reason the RFC Editor currently 
thinks it's been in REF state for 4.5 weeks, so it's a bit further 
down..... perhaps ONE of the referents got published?

Last time mdnbis was on the IESG agenda (August) I think it came down to 
"will publish once the ABNF actually parses", according to tracker.

                     Harald

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 13:54:19 -0800 (PST)

> "will publish once the ABNF actually parses", according to tracker.

Actually, what's been delaying mdnbis is the need for a supplementary
implementation report showing actual interop testing. Randy demanded that
such a report be produced in his original discuss, the text of which
appears to have been lost at some point.

The necessary report was produced (just in time to see the AD who requested it
resign -- sigh) and was submitted to the secretariat, but was turned into hash
when it was actually put online (usual problem: table spacing trashed). I have
a ticket open (#16344) to correct this. I also have another ticket open (ticket
number not sent to me yet) asking for the additional report to be added
to the ballot. And you have a ticket open as well on the ballot to
correct the reference to the original implementation report, which is
broken.

As for the ABNF, I've had an RFC Editor note in hand to deal with the one
remaining issue for several months now.

In any case, once the three open tickets on this are resolved we should
be good to go. Finally.
				Ned