Network Working Group J. Halpern, Ed.
Internet-Draft Ericsson
Updates: 2026 (if approved) E. Rescorla, Ed.
Intended status: Best Current Practice Mozilla
Expires: May 7, 2020 November 4, 2019
IETF Stream Documents Require IETF Rough Consensus
draft-halpern-gendispatch-consensusinformational-00
Abstract
This document proposes that the IETF never publish any IEtF stream
RFCs without IETF rough consensus. This updates RFC 2026.
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on May 7, 2020.
Copyright Notice
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
4. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
7. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1. Introduction
IETF procedures, as defined by [RFC2026] allow for Informational or
Experimental RFCs to be published without IETF rough consensus. For
context, it should be remembered that this RFC predates the
separation of the various streams (e.g. IRTF, IAB, and Independent.)
When it was written, there were only "RFC"s.
As a consequence, it is currently permitted for the IETF to approve
an Internet Draft for publication as an RFC without IETF rough
consensus.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. Proposal
The IETF MUST NOT publish RFCs on the IETF stream without IETF rough
consensus.
4. Discussion
The current procedures permit such publication. The IESG has issued
a statement saying that no document will be issued without first
conducting an IETF Last Call. While this apparently improves the
situation, looking closely it makes it worse. Rather than publishing
documents without verifying that there is rough consensus, as the
wording in [RFC2026] suggests, this has the IESG explicitly
publishing documents on the IETF stream that have failed to achieve
rough consensus.
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One could argue that there is a need for publishing some documents
that the community can not agree on. However, we have an explicit
procedure for such publication, namely the Independent Stream. Or,
for research documents, the IRTF stream, which explicitly publishes
many minority opinion Informational RFCs.
If this proposal is not accepted, there is still a minor problem to
be addressed. When a non-consensus document is published, the
current boilerplate simply omits the sentence claiming that there is
consensus. If the community feels that we need to keep the right for
the IESG to publish Informational or Experimental RFCs without IETF
rough consensus, then please, the IAB SHOULD use its authorithy over
the boilerplate for RFCs to make the boilerplate explicit rather than
relying on readers to detect a missing sentence.
5. IANA Considerations
No values are assigned in this document, no registries are created,
and there is no action assigned to the IANA by this document.
6. Security Considerations
This document introduces no new security considerations. It is a
process document about changes to the rules for certain corner cases
in publishing IETF stream RFCs.
7. Normative References
[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2026>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
Authors' Addresses
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Joel M. Halpern (editor)
Ericsson
P. O. Box 6049
Leesburg, VA 20178
US
EMail: joel.halpern@ericsson.com
Eric K. Rescorla (editor)
Mozilla
331 E. Evelyn Ave
Mountain View, CA 94101
US
EMail: ekr@rtfm.com
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