Subject: RE: A Process Experiment in Normative Reference Handling

From: "Burger, Eric" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:18:26 -0400

I have to agree that the key point is whether the referenced document is
really a normative reference.  If an unstable I-D is a reference, the
protocol clearly isn't ready.  On the other hand, how many times have
you had an AD say, "Don't reference RFC mumble in the draft; you should
reference draft-mumble-bis"?  What is happening here is the reference is
not really material to the protocol - the "old" version is good enough.

Yes, it is nice to have lots of dependencies on bis drafts to raise its
priority, but that doesn't really help the situation we're talking
about, does it?

-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Baker [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 8:03 PM
To: Brian E Carpenter
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: A Process Experiment in Normative Reference Handling

personally, I would be in favor of publishing the document along with  
a reference to the internet draft for which there is a normative  
reference, and updating the reference in the document without  
changing the RFC number as those documents clear the queue. This is a  
major change to RFC Editor process (once published, it is considered  
chiseled into stone), but I would consider a change to the reference  
to be a change that does not affect the content of the document.

To my way of thinking, if that is not true (if a change to the  
referenced I-D would result in a material change to a document  
waiting for publication), then the document isn't ready for the IESG  
to put into the RFC Editor's queues at all.

On Mar 30, 2006, at 4:46 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> It would be very interesting to have WG Chair feedback on
> draft-klensin-norm-ref-00.txt
>
> Good idea? Bad idea?
>
>      Brian
>
> Abstract
>
>    The IETF and RFC Editor have a long-standing rule that a  
> document at
>    a given maturity level cannot be published until all documents it
>    references as normative are at that maturity level or higher.  This
>    rule has sometimes resulted in very long publication delays for
>    documents and some claims that it was a major obstruction to
>    advancing documents in maturity level.  The IETF agreed to a way to
>    bypass this rule with RFC 3967.  This document proposes a one-year
>    process experiment in which the "hold on normative reference" rule
>    will be replaced by a "note downward normative reference and  
> move on"
>    approach.