Subject: Re: Allocating RFC numbers at time of approval

From: Allison Mankin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 09:03:03 -0700

I've been thinking about this for some time, motivated by
the fact that very big fraction (need to do the numbers)
of TSV documents have someone who requested expedited
publication or someone who sent mail of concern about 
delay in the RFC number, about delay in the RFC number 
appearing in the IANA registry.

I have in mind the following outline, chronologically
(with details needing filling in...)

- IESG approves document, which may include some
   "Notes to the RFC Editor" - text changes resulting
    from the review or late Last Call

- IESG obtains the next technical publication designator
   for use ("RFC number") and holds it (or obtains it
   at the time below - this is an implementation detail,
   as is how the IESG/Secretariat actually take the
   actions in this outline).

- IANA performs IANA actions for the document, which
  are technically complex and have give and take, so
  they begin as early as the document is technically
  stable (before it's possible to put the number in
  the registry) - IANA places i-d placeholder.

- The two month timeout on appeals runs out (document approval
  is now final).

- technical publication designator can now be assigned to
  document and given to IANA for its registry information.

At this time:  an new internet-draft should be prepared
with the string - draft-ietf-<wg>-<orginalrestofstring>-rfc####-00.txt
(or something like that).

Instead of the existing i-d headers, where the expiration date 
quite bothers outsiders, because an approved draft may not be an RFC 
before its original (now meaningless to IETF) expiration:

OLD:
INTERNET-DRAFT
September 5, 2005
Expires: March 5, 2006

The new draft would use:

NEW:
RFC-TO-BE ####
Approved September 30, 2005
Expires at RFC Publication

This new i-d would not be as beautiful as the RFC publication,
but it would incorporate the text changes and would be technically
stable (we can consider this also as pushing back on all but the
biggest and most urgent of late technical fixes, asking them to be 
new documents).

The IANA would be given the RFC number at that two-month date
by the IESG and given more urgency about putting those numbers in
the registry RIGHT AWAY.

As Brian says, support for this would have to come from a reasonable
swathe of people in the IETF, but if a lot of chairs like it, that
is a good start :)

---

From: "David B Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 12:35:26 -0400

Hi,

That would help for those circumstances where a reference is needed,
yes.
It would also presumably allow WGs to resolve the references in
subsequent documents, saving the RFC Editor the time to do this.

While this proposal helps some, it would be even better if we could
speed up the process of publishing the RFCs.

David Harrington
[email-masked] 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Allison Mankin
> Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 12:03 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Allocating RFC numbers at time of approval 
> 
> with the string -
draft-ietf-<wg>-<orginalrestofstring>-rfc####-00.txt

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 19:37:36 +0200

Hello Allison,

    Quite a lot of what you write in your note makes sense
to me, but there's one detail I'd like to comment on:

on 2005-09-19 18:03 Allison Mankin said the following:
[...]
> (or something like that).

I think this particular proposed name would be unfortunate.
Currently, a document has one single tag associated with it,
from -00 to publication; it is currently also available in
the RFC editor's index and provides continuity from draft to
RFC (and vice versa): the draft-name.  

The handling proposed above would break that, and make current
(and future) tools more complex, because it would give this
special document a new tag in the drafts namespace .

There are a number of other variations on the name which
would not place a new draft tag in the drafts namespace; one
I can think of would be something like

  approved-<originaldraftname>-rfc####.txt
or maybe
  approved-<originaldraftname>-<originaldraftnum+1>-rfc####.txt

The latter would have the benefit of not obscuring the draft
revision from which the document is derived.

This document would still be associated with the original
draft name tag, but would not have an additional pre-publication
name in the same namespace.

	Henrik

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 16:08:43 -0500

> (with details needing filling in...)

I really, really, like this general approach.

> (or something like that).

or even:

draft-rfcXXXX-00.txt

. . . finally, the term "draft RFC" would be meaningful!

--
Dean

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 10:48:27 -0700

Sorry to continue the thread - hope it moves to a BOF but ...

I like something along the lines of what Allison is proposing but I think we
need to figure out how to deal with normative references. If a draft did not
get the draft-ietf-<wg>-<orginalrestofstring>-rfc####-00 until all of it's
normative references where also in draft-xxx-rfc####-00 state that would
clearly work. Perhaps there is a way to do it even sooner.

Cullen