Removing Expiration Notices from Internet-Drafts
draft-thomson-gendispatch-no-expiry-03

General Area Dispatch                                         M. Thomson
Internet-Draft                                                   Mozilla
Updates: 2026, 2418 (if approved)                             P. Hoffman
Intended status: Best Current Practice                             ICANN
Expires: 20 July 2024                                    17 January 2024

            Removing Expiration Notices from Internet-Drafts
                 draft-thomson-gendispatch-no-expiry-03

Abstract

   The long-standing policy of requiring that Internet-Drafts bear an
   expiration date is no longer necessary.  This document removes
   requirements for expiration for Internet-Drafts from RFC 2026/BCP 9
   and RFC 2418/BCP 25.  In place of expiration, this document
   introduces Internet-Drafts being labeled "active" and "inactive" in
   the IETF tooling.

About This Document

   This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

   The latest revision of this draft can be found at
   https://martinthomson.github.io/no-expiry/draft-thomson-gendispatch-
   no-expiry.html.  Status information for this document may be found at
   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-thomson-gendispatch-no-
   expiry/.

   Discussion of this document takes place on the General Area Dispatch
   Working Group mailing list (mailto:gendispatch@ietf.org), which is
   archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/gendispatch/.
   Subscribe at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/gendispatch/.

   Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
   https://github.com/martinthomson/no-expiry.

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 https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

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   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 20 July 2024.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2024 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 (https://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
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   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  No More Expiration and Automatic Removal  . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Changes to Existing RFCs and Guidelines . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Removing the Expires field from Internet-Drafts . . . . .   4
   3.  Active and Inactive Status for Internet-Drafts  . . . . . . .   5
     3.1.  Replacement Procedures  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Referencing Internet-Drafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  Security and Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     7.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     7.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

1.  Introduction

   The Content Guidelines for Internet Drafts [IDCG] requires that
   Internet-Drafts include an expiration statement.  Tooling and IETF
   practice insist on Internet-Drafts including an expiry date 185 days
   after their posting.  After this expiration date, some systems might
   display an Internet-Draft differently or not at all, with some
   exceptions, such as when the document is under IESG review.

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   Some people believe that automatic expiration prevents the use of an
   Internet-Draft for reference purposes, so that they do not become
   stable references in other work.  Some people believe that automatic
   expiration encourages authors to update drafts that they wish to
   discuss.  Originally, expired drafts were deleted from IETF servers
   completely; more recently, expiration only causes the document to be
   hidden from certain views or searches.

   Copies of expired drafts are retained and can be obtained using other
   services.  Expired drafts are routinely cited and referenced in
   various contexts, such as in IANA registries, academic papers, and
   informational references in RFCs.  Thus, statements about it being
   inappropriate to cite drafts can lead readers not familiar with IETF
   processes to misunderstand how old drafts may used in practice.

   This document does the following:

   *  Updates [STD-PROCESS] to eliminate the removal of an Internet-
      Draft when the latest version is unchanged for more than six
      months.

   *  Updates [WG] to eliminate the inclusion of an expiration date in
      Internet-Drafts.

   *  Updates the Content Guidelines [IDCG] to remove references to
      expiration.

   *  Updates the boilerplate text for Internet-Drafts to no longer
      include the "Expires:" field.

   *  Introduces a status for Internet-Drafts which can be set to either
      "active" or "inactive" in tooling without specifying how this is
      implemented.

2.  No More Expiration and Automatic Removal

   The date of posting for an Internet-Draft is the best -- or perhaps
   only -- information available that can be added to a document the
   time of publication that might help readers understand whether the
   content is valid.  Future events might invalidate the content
   virtually immediately; conversely, an Internet-Draft could also
   remain relevant for an arbitrarily long period of time.

2.1.  Changes to Existing RFCs and Guidelines

   RFC 2026 [STD-PROCESS] talks about removal of Internet-Drafts in the
   second paragraph of Section 2.2, which reads:

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   |  An Internet-Draft that is published as an RFC, or that has
   |  remained unchanged in the Internet-Drafts directory for more than
   |  six months without being recommended by the IESG for publication
   |  as an RFC, is simply removed from the Internet-Drafts directory.
   |  At any time, an Internet-Draft may be replaced by a more recent
   |  version of the same specification, restarting the six-month
   |  timeout period.

   This paragraph is replaced with:

   |  At any time, an Internet-Draft may be replaced by a more recent
   |  version of the same specification.

   RFC 2418 [WG] talks about header information in Internet-Drafts in
   Section 7.2.  The bullet point "- The expiration date for the I-D."
   from that section is removed.

   The Content Guidelines [IDCG] refers to boilerplate that will be
   updated; see Section 2.2.  Content Guidelines also says "A statement
   specifying the expiry date of the Internet-Draft."  This statement
   and the description of how to specify the expiry date is removed.

2.2.  Removing the Expires field from Internet-Drafts

   This document specifies that the "Expires:" field be removed from the
   header of submitted Internet-Drafts, and that the boilerplate be
   amended as follows:

   OLD:

      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."

   NEW:

      Internet-Drafts are draft documents that may be updated, replaced,
      or obsoleted at any time.  It is inappropriate to cite them other
      than as "work in progress."

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3.  Active and Inactive Status for Internet-Drafts

   The tooling maintained by the IETF (such as the Datatracker) can mark
   the latest version of a draft as "active" or "inactive".  When a new
   version of a draft is published, it is immediately marked as
   "active", and all earlier versions of that draft are marked as
   "inactive".

   Other reasons that a draft might be marked "active" or "inactive" are
   open, but will be informed by the communities that use Internet-
   Drafts.  Suggestions have already been made for automatically marking
   drafts as "inactive" after a certain period of time, for allowing
   working group chairs to control the marking for working group drafts,
   for allowing documents targeting different streams (see Section 5 of
   [RFC4844]) to be subject to stream-specific policies, and for authors
   being able to change the status of their draft, either to mark a
   draft that has been overcome by events as "inactive" or mark a draft
   as "active" when there is renewed interest.

3.1.  Replacement Procedures

   Originally, the expiration of a draft was intended to ensure that the
   topic is disqualified from consideration.  Updating a draft before
   expiration was intended to indicate continued interest from the
   authors.

   Expiration was also used as a reminder to authors to update
   documents.  Without expiration, a substitute might be to provide a
   note in advance of planned sessions.  For instance, for an upcoming
   session N+1, a reminder might be issued for drafts that have not been
   updated in the interval between session N and session N+1, but were
   updated between session N-1 and session N.  The "active" and
   "inactive" markings can also be used nudge authors to update drafts
   before a meeting.

   People might choose to concentrate their efforts on drafts that have
   been recently updated.  With "active" and "inactive" markings, those
   people will have another indicator for which documents might be of
   interest.

4.  Referencing Internet-Drafts

   Documents referencing Internet-Drafts should always include the two-
   digit version number of the draft, unless there is a reason to refer
   to the draft generically.  For instance, when producing an Internet-
   Draft it can be convenient to refer to another draft generically,
   where document production tools ensure that the final artifact refers
   to the most recent version.

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   The IETF Datatracker service maintains a stable archive of most
   Internet-Drafts that is accessible by version.  Using IETF
   Datatracker URLs in references ensures the availability of the
   referenced document.

5.  Security and Privacy Considerations

   This document has no direct implications on security or privacy.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document makes no request of IANA.

7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [IDCG]     "Content guidelines overview", 1 June 2022,
              <https://authors.ietf.org/en/content-guidelines-overview>.

   [STD-PROCESS]
              Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
              3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2026>.

   [WG]       Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and
              Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, DOI 10.17487/RFC2418,
              September 1998, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2418>.

7.2.  Informative References

   [RFC4844]  Daigle, L., Ed. and IAB, "The RFC Series and RFC Editor",
              RFC 4844, DOI 10.17487/RFC4844, July 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4844>.

Authors' Addresses

   Martin Thomson
   Mozilla
   Email: mt@lowentropy.net

   Paul Hoffman
   ICANN
   Email: paul.hoffman@icann.org

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