SM: > s much as I would like to use the IESG as a scapegoat, the reality is that > IETF working groups also work briskly to on impediments. Section 4 mentions > that "the rules that prohibit references to documents at lower maturity > levels are a major cause of stagnation in the advancement of documents". I > beg to disagree. Quoting RFC 4897: > > "With appropriate community review, the IESG may establish procedures > for when normative downward references should delay a document and > when downward references should be noted." > > There is an IESG statement [1] about that. I'll highlight the following > sentence: > > "Normative references specify documents that must be read to > understand or implement the technology in the new RFC, or > whose technology must be present for the technology in the > new RFC to work." > > Quoting RFC 2026: > > "Standards track specifications normally must not depend on > other standards track specifications which are at a lower maturity > level or on non standards track specifications other than referenced > specifications from other standards bodies." > > Let's take a document moving to Draft Standard as an example. When we talk > about "down-ref", it is the maturity that is the issue. What it means, in my > opinion, is that the referenced (normative) Proposed Standard can be changed > in ways which affect the stability of the "Draft Standard" document. An > implementation that is compliant with the Draft Standard may end up being > incompliant overnight as the group that worked on the referenced Proposed > Standard found some good reason for adding some requirements. Having > down-refs on the "No Fly" list can be an impediment. By explicitly calling > out the down-ref during a Last Call, the IETF offers a means to evaluate > whether the document can live with the down-ref. > > I commented a week ago on the down-refs in RFC 5953 which is being advanced > to Draft Standard. One of the down-refs could be fixed easily. Another one > could be addressed with some rewording. Sometimes, such a change is not > possible. In a distant future, the IETF community might come to terms with > the notion that down-refs are not evil.
My person experience with advancing documents is that downrefs are a significant hindrance. As you point out, procedures have been adopted to permit downrefs, but they are not sufficient. We often see Last Call repeated just to resolve a downref that was caught very late in the process. These intoduce delay, and they almost never produce a single comment from the community. Russ _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
