Subject: Expiring drafts policy

From: Olafur Gudmundsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:58:53 -0400

In the good old days it was decided that drafts should expire after
6 months.
I'm wondering if that policy should be revisited.
What I'm thinking is that a draft should be considered "active" for about
2 IETF meetings or 9 months.

The reason I started thinking about this is a draft I have at the IESG
expired from my charter. We all know that WG LC processing takes about a
month, IESG takes at least 2 months, RFC editor takes at least 2 months.

	comments

	Olafur

---

From: [email-masked] (Scott O. Bradner)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:10:20 -0400 (EDT)

fwiw - any change to the formal policy would require an update
to RFC 2026 section 2.2

Scott

ps - but the tools folk have basically removed teh removal process
since old IDs are always accessable through their diff tool (a
very good thing in my mind)

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:21:05 -0500

My understanding is that draft expiration stops when the draft enters 
"publication requested", so some of the details below don't matter so much, 
but I do encourage consideration of a two-IETF cycle expiration timeline - 
there's often a reason why a draft isn't revised after one IETF meeting, but 
if the draft isn't revised after the second IETF meeting, that's probably 
not a good sign.

And "9 months" seems like a very reasonable proxy for "two IETF cycles".

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:36:05 +0200

There may be good reasons to change the expiration policy (e.g., better 
tools have basically made expirations much less relevant). However, the 
length of time spent in the AD Review / IETF Last Call / IESG Review / 
RFC Editor is not a reason to change the policy. Drafts do not expire 
while they are in these states. (But they do expire immediately if the 
AD moves them to, say, AD Is Watching -- as I discovered when I 
accidentally pressed the wrong button somewhere and the draft expired.)

> IESG takes at least 2 months
The average is around 5 months (with big parts of this time spent 
waiting for document revisions). But there's a lot of variation.

Jari

---

From: "David B. Nelson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:12:40 -0400

I suppose this should question be targeted to a mailing last at
xml.resource.org, but I thought maybe one of my fellow chairs might have run
across the same issue at one time or another.

Is there an easy way, using xml2rfc, to cite an IETF STD, e.g. STD 66 SNMP,
using a citation library, similar to
http://xml.resource.org/public/rfc/bibxml/ ?

I can, of course, effectively cite the STD by referencing the collection of
included RFCs, but what is the value of having the STD series if we can't
conveniently utilize them as citations in Internet-Drafts, etc.?  :-)

Thanks, in advance, for your assistance!

Regards,

Dave Nelson

---

From: "Dan Wing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:31:54 -0700

> but what is the value of having the STD series 

That's the crux of the question...

-d

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From: "Eastlake III Donald-LDE008" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:43:22 -0400

9 months, which also happens to be the human gestation period, seems
good to me.

Donald

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
Behalf Of Olafur Gudmundsson
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 8:59 AM
To: Working Group Chairs
Subject: Expiring drafts policy 

In the good old days it was decided that drafts should expire after
6 months.
I'm wondering if that policy should be revisited.
What I'm thinking is that a draft should be considered "active" for
about
2 IETF meetings or 9 months.

	comments

	Olafur

---

From: "DRAGE, Keith \(Keith\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:39:33 +0200

As Jari indicates, drafts do not expire once they have reached publication request, no matter how old they are.

That means that any expiration that does occur will occur with the document still in the working group.

If the draft is not revised, that means that the document has been sitting in the working group for six months without a single comment being made that causes a revision!

One could equally argue that that is a reason for discontinuing the charter item as for extending the expiry. (I do accept that there are some reasons why a document may be on hold waiting for something else to happen, but these tend to be in a minority)

As you might guess, I am currently not in favour of extending the time period. I actually want to see wg drafts being revised 6 times a year instead of the 3 a year they currently seem to get (i.e. 3 hours before the draft deadline for each meeting), in the vague hope that we complete the documents in half the time.

Regards

Keith 

> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Jari Arkko
> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 5:36 PM
> To: Olafur Gudmundsson
> Cc: Working Group Chairs
> Subject: Re: Expiring drafts policy
> 
> There may be good reasons to change the expiration policy 
> (e.g., better tools have basically made expirations much less 
> relevant). However, the length of time spent in the AD Review 
> / IETF Last Call / IESG Review / RFC Editor is not a reason 
> to change the policy. Drafts do not expire while they are in 
> these states. (But they do expire immediately if the AD moves 
> them to, say, AD Is Watching -- as I discovered when I 
> The average is around 5 months (with big parts of this time 
> spent waiting for document revisions). But there's a lot of variation.
> 
> Jari
> 
>

---

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 06:54:02 -0700

I suggest two tracks:

1) Every version of every draft is archived by the IETF in perpetuity

Storage is cheap and these documents are invaluable as sources of prior art.

2) 'Expire' the entry of a draft in the IETF index of active drafts after some period.

Pour encourager les autres

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] on behalf of Eastlake III Donald-LDE008
Sent: Wed 11/06/2008 4:43 PM
To: Working Group Chairs
Subject: RE: Expiring drafts policy 

Donald

-----Original Message-----

	comments

	Olafur

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:12:37 -0400

> Storage is cheap and these documents are invaluable as sources of prior art.

I have heard people make the argument (which I find somewhat
compelling, though not actually persusive) that people are more likely
to propose possibly nitwit ideas on the grounds if they know they
won't, in 10 years time, be held up to ridicule because of the silly
ideas they once proposed.  I guess this is the throw-at-wall,
see-what-sticks school of engineering.

I think the force of this argument is rather blunted because the
current tools site, but it still has something to recommend it.

I do, however, see the merit of increasing the length to expiration to
cover two meetings.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
+1 503 667 4564 x104
http://www.commandprompt.com/

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From: "John G. Scudder" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:26:21 -0400

> current tools site, but it still has something to recommend it.

I don't find this particularly persuasive given the fact that various  
non-IETF sites archive expired I-Ds anyway.  Does anyone really  
believe any more that everything they post publicly -- be it an I-D or  
this email -- isn't being archived somewhere?  The only thing the  
current policy achieves is to make it more of a hassle to locate  
expired drafts.

I'd like to see an IETF expired-drafts archive.  (Extending the  
expiration time would be OK with me too.)

--John

---

From: James Carlson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:55:19 -0400

> current tools site, but it still has something to recommend it.

These folks have apparently never met Google or the Internet Archive.

Even without the archiving going on at the tools site, a quick search
easily nets me gems like this:

  http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-terrell-math-quant-ternary-logic-of-binary-sys-01.txt

I don't think you can really hide.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <[email-masked]>
Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive        71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677