Characterization of Proposed Standards
draft-kolkman-proposed-standards-clarified-04
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual in gen area) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Olaf Kolkman , Scott O. Bradner , Sean Turner | ||
| Last updated | 2013-10-24 (Latest revision 2013-10-17) | ||
| Stream | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | ||
| Formats | plain text xml htmlized pdfized bibtex | ||
| Reviews |
GENART Telechat review
Ready
GENART Last Call review
(of
-03)
Ready with Nits
|
||
| Stream | WG state | Submitted to IESG for Publication | |
| Document shepherd | Jari Arkko | ||
| IESG | IESG state | IESG Evaluation::Revised I-D Needed | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date |
(None)
Needs a YES. Needs 10 more YES or NO OBJECTION positions to pass. |
||
| Responsible AD | Jari Arkko | ||
| Send notices to | olaf@nlnetlabs.nl, sob@harvard.edu, turners@ieca.com, draft-kolkman-proposed-standards-clarified@tools.ietf.org | ||
| IANA | IANA review state | IANA OK - No Actions Needed |
draft-kolkman-proposed-standards-clarified-04
Network Working Group O. Kolkman
Internet-Draft NLnet Labs
Updates: 2026 (if approved) S. Bradner
Intended status: Best Current Practice Harvard University
Expires: April 18, 2014 S. Turner
IECA, Inc.
October 17, 2013
Characterization of Proposed Standards
draft-kolkman-proposed-standards-clarified-04
Abstract
RFC 2026 describes the review performed by the IESG on IETF Proposed
Standard RFCs and states the maturity level of those documents. This
document clarifies those descriptions and updates RFC 2026 by
providing a new characterization of Proposed Standards.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on April 18, 2014.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text
as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
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2. IETF Review of Proposed Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Characterization of Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Characterization of IETF Proposed Standard Specifications 3
3.2. Characteristics of Internet Standards . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Further Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Appendix B. Internet Draft Notes and RFC Editor Instructions . . . 5
Appendix B.1. Version 00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Appendix B.2. Version 00->01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Appendix B.3. Version 01->02 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Appendix B.4. Version 02->03 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Appendix B.5. Version 03->04 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Appendix B.6. Editors versioning info . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
[Editor Note: ietf@ietf.org is the mailing-list for discussing this
draft.]
In the two decades after publication of RFC 2026 [RFC2026] the IETF
has evolved its review processes of Proposed Standard RFCs and thus
RFC 2026 section 4.1.1 no longer accurately describes IETF Proposed
Standards.
This document exclusively updates the characterization of Proposed
Standards from RFC2026 Section 4.1.1 and does not speak to or alter
the procedures for the maintenance of Standards Track documents from
RFC 2026 and RFC 6410 [RFC6410]. For complete understanding of the
requirements for standardization those documents should be read in
conjunction with this document.
2. IETF Review of Proposed Standards
The entry-level maturity for the standards track is "Proposed
Standard". A specific action by the IESG is required to move a
specification onto the standards track at the "Proposed Standard"
level.
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Initially it was assumed that most IETF technical specifications
would progress through a series of maturity stages starting with
Proposed Standard, then progressing to Draft Standard then, finally,
to Internet Standard (see RFC 2026 section 6). Over time, for a
number of reasons, this progression became less common. In response,
the IETF strengthened its review of Proposed Standards, basically
operating as if the Proposed Standard was the last chance for the
IETF to ensure the quality of the technology and the clarity of the
Standard Track document. The result was that IETF Proposed Standards
approved over the last decade or more have had extensive reviews.
Because of this change in review assumptions, IETF Proposed Standards
should be considered to be at least as mature as final standards from
other standards development organizations. The IETF review is
possibly more extensive than that done in most other SDOs owing to
the cross-area technical review performed by the IETF, exemplified by
technical review by the full IESG at the last stage of specification
development. That position is further strengthened by the common
presence of interoperable running code and implementation before
publication as a Proposed Standard.
3. Characterization of Specification
Section 3.1 of this document replaces RFC 2026 Section 4.1.1. Section
3.2 is a verbatim copy of the characterization of Internet Standards
from RFC 2026 Section 4.1.3 and is provided for convenient reference.
3.1. Characterization of IETF Proposed Standard Specifications
The entry-level maturity for the standards track is "Proposed
Standard". A specific action by the IESG is required to move a
specification onto the standards track at the "Proposed Standard"
level.
A Proposed Standard specification is stable, has resolved known
design choices, is well-understood, has received significant
community review, and appears to enjoy enough community interest to
be considered valuable.
Usually, neither implementation nor operational experience is
required for the designation of a specification as a Proposed
Standard. However, such experience is highly desirable, and will
usually represent a strong argument in favor of a Proposed Standard
designation.
The IESG may require implementation and/or operational experience
prior to granting Proposed Standard status to a specification that
materially affects the core Internet protocols or that specifies
behavior that may have significant operational impact on the
Internet.
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A Proposed Standard will have no known technical omissions with
respect to the requirements placed upon it. Proposed Standards are
of such quality that implementations can be deployed in the Internet.
However, as with all technical specifications, Proposed Standards may
be revised if problems are found or better solutions are identified,
when experiences with deploying implementations of such technologies
at scale is gathered.
3.2. Characteristics of Internet Standards
A specification for which significant implementation and successful
operational experience has been obtained may be elevated to the
Internet Standard level. An Internet Standard (which may simply be
referred to as a Standard) is characterized by a high degree of
technical maturity and by a generally held belief that the specified
protocol or service provides significant benefit to the Internet
community.
4. Further Considerations
While less mature specifications will usually be published as
Informational or Experimental RFCs, the IETF may, on occasion,
publish a specification that still contains areas for improvement or
certain uncertainties about whether the best engineering choices are
made. In those cases that fact will be clearly and prominently
communicated in the document e.g. in the abstract, the introduction,
or a separate section or statement.
5. Security Considerations
This document does not directly affect the security of the Internet.
6. IANA Considerations
There are no actions for IANA.
7. References
[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
[RFC6410] Housley, R., Crocker, D. and E. Burger, "Reducing the
Standards Track to Two Maturity Levels", BCP 9, RFC 6410,
October 2011.
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
This document is inspired by a discussion at the open microphone
session during the technical plenary at IETF 87. Thanks to, in
alphabetical order: Jari Arkko, Carsten Bormann, Scott Brim, Spencer
Dawkins, Randy Bush, Benoit Claise, Dave Cridland, Adrian Farrel,
John Klensin, Subramanian Moonesamy for motivation, input, and
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review.
Appendix B. Internet Draft Notes and RFC Editor Instructions
This section is to assist reviewers of this document.
[Editor Note: Please remove this section and its subsections at
publication]
Appendix B.1. Version 00
Introduction and motivation
Verbatim copy from section 4.1.1 and 4.1.3 of [RFC2026] of the
Proposed and ant Internet Draft characterization into Section 3.1 and
Section 3.2
Modification of paragraphs of the Proposed Standards
characterization, namely:
OLD:
A Proposed Standard specification is generally stable, has resolved
known design choices, is believed to be well-understood, has received
significant community review, and appears to enjoy enough community
interest to be considered valuable. However, further experience
might result in a change or even retraction of the specification
before it advances.
NEW:
A Proposed Standard specification is stable, has resolved known
design choices, is well-understood, has received significant
community review, and appears to enjoy enough community interest to
be considered valuable. However, as with all technical standards,
further experience might result in a change or even retraction of the
specification in the future.
OLD:
A Proposed Standard should have no known technical omissions with
respect to the requirements placed upon it. However, the IESG may
waive this requirement in order to allow a specification to advance
to the Proposed Standard state when it is considered to be useful and
necessary (and timely) even with known technical omissions.
Implementors should treat Proposed Standards as immature
specifications. It is desirable to implement them in order to gain
experience and to validate, test, and clarify the specification.
However, since the content of Proposed Standards may be changed if
problems are found or better solutions are identified, deploying
implementations of such standards into a disruption-sensitive
environment is not recommended.
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NEW:
A Proposed Standard will have no known technical omissions with
respect to the requirements placed upon it. Proposed Standards are
of such quality that implementations can be deployed in the Internet.
However, as with all technical specifications, Proposed Standards may
be revised if problems are found or better solutions are identified,
when experiences with deploying implementations of such technologies
at scale is gathered.
Appendix B.2. Version 00->01
Added "Updates 2026" and added Sean's initial"
Copied the whole characterization paragraph for Internet Standards
from 2026, instead of only the line that is the actual
characterization itself.
Added the Further Consideration section based on discussion on the
mailinglist.
Appendix B.3. Version 01->02
Sharpened the 2nd paragraph of the Introduction to be clear that the
scope of the update is limited to section 4.1.1. and that this
document should not be read stand-alone.
Refined the "Further Considerations" Sections to express that as part
of the process less mature specs are sometimes approved as Proposed
Standards but that in those cases the documents should clearly
indicate that.
Minor editorial nits, and corrections.
Appendix B.4. Version 02->03
Changed a number of occurances where IESG review was used to the
intended IETF review.
Appendix B.5. Version 03->04
s/In fact, the IETF review is more extensive than that done in most
other SDOs/The IETF review is possibly more extensive than that done
in most other SDOs/
Minor spelling and style errors
Appendix B.6. Editors versioning info
$Id: draft-kolkman-proposed-standards-clarified.xml 16 2013-10-17
13:22:30Z olaf $
Authors' Addresses
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Olaf Kolkman
Stichting NLnet Labs
Science Park 400
Amsterdam, 1098 XH
The Netherlands
Email: olaf@nlnetlabs.nl
URI: http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/
Scott O. Bradner
Harvard University Information Technology
Innovation and Architecture
1350 Mass Ave., Room 760
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States of America
Phone: +1 617 495 3864
Email: sob@harvard.edu
URI: http://www.harvard.edu/huit
Sean Turner
IECA, Inc.
Email: turners@ieca.com
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