Michael; I understand your confusion. The standard is IEEE 802.15.4, a specific document has a year at the end, hence IEEE 802.15.4-2003 or IEEE 802.15.4-2006 refer to old versions of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. An amendment or corrigendum adds a letter and the year of approval onto the end of the standard it is modifying, e.g. IEEE 802.15.4e-2012 denotes the amendment document for the MAC enhancements.
When an amendment or a corrigendum is approved, it becomes part of the standard, e.g. IEEE 802.15.4 includes amendments a, c, d, e, f, g, j, k, m, and p. Please note that at this time there is no single document defining the whole 802.15.4 standard, that is what the current revision draft (currently believed to be IEEE 802.15.4-2015) will do. You have mentioned “and IEEE breaks something”, I would like to clarify this concept. A significant effort is used to make sure all changes are backwards compatible, however sometimes that isn’t always possible. For example. in 802.15.4-2003 the security was broken, when 802.15.4-2006 was released it fixed the security issue(s) but broke backward compatibility for security, hence the only backward compatibility between 802.15.4-2006 and 802.15.4-2003 is for no security. Accordingly, if a non-IEEE 802.15 group addresses a problem with 802.15.4 by citing an exception to the standard to work around a problem, future versions of the standard may not be backward compatible with the exception. If a person or persons are concerned about a new revision “breaking” some aspect of the standard, they can participate in the work effort to revise the standard. Participation is possible by attending the meetings and becoming a voter, or just by attending the conference calls and reading the meeting minutes. Before a draft is submitted to letter ballot it is open for all to review, it is only after letter ballot has started that it is viewable by voting members only. Back to Michael’s final statement, I have already stated what is meant by 802.15.4, but what is meant by 802.15.4e-2012? IEEE 802.15.4e-2012 is a document that states the approved changes to the IEEE 802.15.4-2011 document. It does not include any other amendments such as 802.15.4g (SUN PHY changes). It also doesn’t include any fixes for known broken areas of the IEEE 802.15.4-2011 standard such as in the security section. So, citing IEEE 802.15.4e would require 6tisch to cite exceptions to the standard, i.e. modify the standard. Pat Kinney Kinney Consulting LLC IEEE 802.15 WG vice chair, TG chair ISA100.11a WG chair O: +1.847.960.3715 [email protected] On 30, Apr2015, at 8:24, Michael Richardson <[email protected]> wrote: Pascal Thubert (pthubert) <[email protected]> wrote: > At the interim last Friday we found that we should not mix the > question on the references in the draft and that of the ‘e’ in the > charter. > For the specific case of the ‘e’, we discussed that the group will not > stop brutally at the end of 2015 and that we really work on TSCH, so > we could remove the ‘e’. > This is a call for consensus. The proposal on the table is effectively > to remove the ‘e’; if you disagree please let us know now. I still do not understand IEEE referencing rules. I found one of Pascal's comments interesting. If I understood, he said: * If we reference IEEE document without a year (or I guess, letter), and IEEE breaks something in a future that we depend upon, then we would have a basis for complaint. * If we reference IEEE document with a year, then we have no basis for a complaint, as they aren't changing/breaking the old spec. But, I'm unclear what it means to reference "802.15.4" today, when 802.15.4-2015 is not yet published (Auguest 2015, said Pat). I therefore think it appropriate to drop the "e" only when the -2015 is out, so let's do that in November. At which point, my question about -year vs not year might have a different answer. -- Michael Richardson <[email protected]>, Sandelman Software Works -= IPv6 IoT consulting =- _______________________________________________ 6tisch mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6tisch _______________________________________________ 6tisch mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/6tisch
