IETF isn't the protocol police.
Agreed. But the IPv6 police seem a bit overenthusiastic these days.
("These days" meaning for the last 20 years or so.)
Metadata in this case is to help implementers find the links between
documents when they build upon one another and make the act of
implementing IETF standards mildly more user-friendly. 4659 has 4364
as a normative reference, I am simply suggesting that there should be
a forward reference to 4659 from 4364 to identify that the protocol
was later extended with new features that they should consider
implementing.
This just isn't the meaning of "Updates".
I think that the nuanced inference that you are making as to why
"updates" is used or not used is going to be lost on all but those
deeply involved in IETF standards minutiae.
Agreed. Of course, the same could be said of all the meta-data,
including the classification as "standards track", "experimental", etc.
Nevertheless, the terms have been given a certain meaning with regard
to IETF process, and we can't just decide that we're going to use them
differently.
The only real impact of accepting this erratum would be to give fuel to
non-productive arguments like:
- "Hey, your alleged implementation of 4364 isn't compliant to 4364,
because it doesn't implement 4659."
- "But it was compliant last week!"
- "No, it hasn't been compliant since BCP177 was published".
- "Then BCP177 should have updated 4364"
So I would suggest rejecting this erratum on the grounds that any
positive effect is more than outweighed by the time wasted having
non-productive arguments about it.
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