On Tue, 2012-08-28 at 17:34 -0400, Jeffrey Altman wrote: > Jason asked what the impact of this decision has on the AFS3 > standardization process. This decision means that the IETF and the RFC > Editor cannot be used to publish archival copies of protocol documents > that are created by this group. This group can still publish documents > on a web site of its own, via mailing list archives, or many other > methods.
Well, that's not entirely true. We couldn't use the RFC Editor to publish documents that are derivative of the original OpenAFS .xg files or other source code or documentation released by IBM under that license. However, we could do so for other things we produce, including documents defining new protocols, data structures, and RPCs, and perhaps even a certain level of documentation of existing protocols. Exactly where the line would be is unclear, as it depends on a determination of what is or is not a derivative work, which ultimately can be determined only by a court. That said, I've been thinking about this off and on for a while, and I think I've come to the conclusion that we are better off publishing our documents on our own rather than via the independent submission RFC stream. The main benefit for us to publishing documents as RFCs is widespread distribution, archiving, and stable references. However, it is much easier today to get those benefits in other ways than it was when the RFC series was started, and the drawbacks for us are considerable. Besides the licensing issues references in this thread, there are reviews and other process delay that happens for each document we publish that way. There are terminology disconnects that will happen every time we publish a document, since our "standards" are not Internet standards. And, we've already agreed to limit the extent to which we consume RFC Editor resources by publishing only our "standards" as RFCs, leaving so-called "experimental" documents as Internet-Drafts indefinitely. I still believe our working documents should take the form of Internet-Drafts, and should be distributed via the I-D repository. However, at this point my position is that we are better off publishing completed documents ourselves. -- Jeff _______________________________________________ AFS3-standardization mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/afs3-standardization
