--On Tuesday, June 17, 2025 11:22 -0700 Eric Rescorla <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2025 at 11:14 AM John C Klensin > <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> --On Tuesday, June 17, 2025 10:50 -0700 Eric Rescorla >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > I agree with Eliot that we now have an inconsistency with >> > respect to Section 7.6, but I don't think the fix is to remove >> > the (as Jay says) very carefully negotiated "historical" text, >> > especially as part of the idea was to acknowledge historical >> > perspectives. >> > >> > Instead, I think the right fix is to revert 7.6 to the original >> > language from RFC 9280 and add a note that acknowledges that we >> > are relaxing this property. Perhaps "Note that historically RFCs >> > were treated as immutable, but [THIS RFC] allows those RFCs to be >> > reissued provided that the semantic content is preserved to the >> > greatest extent possible". >> >> I have not been able to follow the discussion as closely as I would >> have liked. However, consider the discussions on different lists >> lately about exactly what specific words mean (including with or >> without case distinctions) and, while not phrased that way, whether >> or not "exact" actually means "exact" and how much context counts. >> For someone who is trying to depend on the content of an RFC, a >> condition like "preserved to the greatest extent possible" -- one >> that is inherently subjective -- is equivalent, or nearly so, to >> "well, probably the semantic comment that you, the reader, care >> about and how it is interpreted won't change but maybe it will". >> And, I'm sorry, but that is ultimately equivalent to "can't trust >> an RFC to mean what it meant when it was published". >> >> I think we should be very cautious about going there or even >> appearing to do so. >> > > AIUI this precise change was one of the main motivations for this > document, and > the most of the the aforementioned text already appears in S 1.4.1: > > https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-editorial-rswg-rfc9280-update > s-03.html#section-1.4.1 > > I'm just suggesting (following Eliot) that we make clear in S 7.6 > (which is about > history) that the historical property was immutability but that we > are now changing that. > > For the record, I don't really agree with you on the substantive > question here, but as this document has already passed WGLC and is > now in front of the RSAB, I don't think it's really productive to > debate the merits at this point. Ok. I didn't really say anything today that I didn't say a year or two ago. So just take my note as a reminder that consensus on this subject remains fairly rough --perhaps especially so when those without the time to follow this list closely are considered-- and move on as appropriate. john _______________________________________________ rfc-interest mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
