Handling Normative References to Standards-Track Documents
RFC 4897
| Document | Type |
RFC - Best Current Practice
(June 2007; Errata)
Updates RFC 3967
Also known as BCP 97
Was draft-klensin-norm-ref (individual in gen area)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2013-03-02 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
| Stream | WG state | (None) | |
| Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 4897 (Best Current Practice) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Russ Housley | ||
| Send notices to | klensin@jck.com, hartmans-ietf@mit.edu | ||
Network Working Group J. Klensin
Request for Comments: 4897
BCP: 97 S. Hartman
Updates: 3967 MIT
Category: Best Current Practice June 2007
Handling Normative References to Standards-Track Documents
Status of This Memo
This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the
Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).
Abstract
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Request for Comments
(RFC) Editor have a long-standing rule that a document at a given
maturity level cannot be published until all of the documents that it
references as normative are at that maturity level or higher. This
rule has sometimes resulted in very long publication delays for
documents and some claims that it was a major obstruction to
advancing documents in maturity level. The IETF agreed on a way to
bypass this rule with RFC 3967. This document describes a simpler
procedure for downward references to Standards-Track and Best Current
Practice (BCP) documents, namely "note and move on". The procedure
in RFC 3967 still applies for downward references to other classes of
documents. In both cases, annotations should be added to such
References.
Klensin & Hartman Best Current Practice [Page 1]
RFC 4897 Normative References June 2007
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. Terminology .....................................................3
3. Normative Reference Rule ........................................3
3.1. Source Documents Not Yet Processed by the IESG .............3
3.2. Documents Already in the RFC Editor Queue ..................4
4. Target Documents Not on the Standards Track .....................4
5. Target Documents that Can Be Referenced This Way ................4
6. Security Considerations .........................................5
7. Acknowledgements ................................................5
8. Normative References ............................................5
1. Introduction
The IETF and RFC Editor have a long-standing rule (see, e.g., RFC
2026, Section 4.2.4 [RFC2026] and the extended discussion in RFC 3967
[RFC3967]) that a document at a given maturity level cannot be
published until all of the documents to which it makes a normative
reference are at that maturity level or higher. This rule has
sometimes resulted in very long publication delays for documents and
some claims that it was a major obstruction to advancing documents in
maturity level. Recognizing the problems that this rule sometimes
caused, RFC 3967 established an exception procedure for normative
downward references under some specific circumstances. Perhaps
because of its fairly stringent requirements, RFC 3967 has not proven
adequate either to clear the backlog of documents awaiting upgraded
documents or to prevent additional documents from joining that queue.
This document replaces the long-standing rule for downward references
to Standards-Track documents (including BCPs) that are already
published. For normative references to Standards-Track and BCP
documents, that rule was to hold the newer, referencing, document
until the referenced ones could be brought to the appropriate
maturity level. It is now possible, following procedures described
below, to simply note the downward normative reference and move on.
This document also updates RFC 3967. When downward references from a
source document are approved under the procedure specified in that
specification, we recommend that the references in the approved
(source) document be annotated in the same way as references approved
under this rule.
Klensin & Hartman Best Current Practice [Page 2]
RFC 4897 Normative References June 2007
2. Terminology
A reference involves two documents, the one in which the reference is
embedded and the document referenced. Where needed for clarity,
these documents are referred to as the "source document" and "target
document", respectively.
The term "Standards-Track document", as used in this specification,
is assumed to include BCPs but not Informational or Experimental
documents of any variety or origin.
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