Hi Barry! Thanks for explaining that “current”, “experimental” and “historic” is not a reference to document status.
My assessment is that these words are still underspecified. I could imagine that “current” and “experimental” could both denote “seen in the wild”. What’s the difference? What makes something “historic”, is it no longer found in the wild? Maybe it “shouldn’t be used”. I’m concerned that the DE doesn’t have enough guidance. Since this convention is used elsewhere and I’m not tracking it, could you provide a pointer or two where these are defined. Recognizing that the text here is not intended to talk about document status, I do note that the community expressed that even the better specified “historical” document status is ambiguous. See https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/8W7u30MLlJE9kiuYcpxCxJWxZeE/. Roman From: Barry Leiba <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2025 5:42 PM To: Roman Danyliw <[email protected]> Cc: Todd Herr <[email protected]>; The IESG <[email protected]>; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: Roman Danyliw's Discuss on draft-ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis-38: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT) Warning: External Sender - do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. The field isn’t meant to apply to any document, but to the tag that is registered in that entry. It’s the state of that tag: in current use, in experimental use, or historic (no longer in use). This sort of thing has been in a number of other registries, has been clearly understood, and as far as I know, hasn’t been (and hasn’t needed to be) formally defined. We could write text, but it would say something like, “ ‘current’ means the tag is in current use,” and such, and would be of no practical value. Barry On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 5:17 PM Roman Danyliw <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi Todd! From: Todd Herr <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2025 2:44 PM To: Roman Danyliw <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: The IESG <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: Roman Danyliw's Discuss on draft-ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis-38: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT) Warning: External Sender - do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. On Tue, Feb 4, 2025 at 9:03 PM Roman Danyliw via Datatracker <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCUSS: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ** Section 9.3. and 9.4. Status column -- Section 9.3 “Each registration includes the tag name; the specification that defines it; a brief description; and its status, which is one of "current", "experimental", or "historic".” -- Section 9.4 “In addition to a reference to a permanent specification, each registration includes the format name, a brief description, and its status, which must be one of "current", "experimental", or "historic".” The status column was defined in RFC7489 and already in the existing IANA registries. However, there doesn't appear to be adequate guidance on setting and using it. Specifically: (1) What are the criteria used to set a particular code point to “current”, “experimental” or “historical” status? There is no guidance for the designated expert. It can’t be the status of a given RFC since the registration procedure is “specification required” allowing for non-RFC documents. Section 9.3 appears to be updating the registry to amend existing code points to historic status (e.g., pct, rf, ri) so the WG must have some intuition that would benefit from being document here. (2) What does experimental or historic signal to implementers? What do they do with this information? Roman, As co-editor, let me first thank you for taking the time to review and comment. As we work to produce a new draft in response to your and other reviews, we find ourselves struggling to come up with definitions of these terms. We believe them to be in common, widespread use in the context they're used here, but we can't off the tops of our heads think of RFCs that have defined them. Can you please point us to an example RFC or two that has definitions for the criteria used for these terms? [Roman] Are “experimental”, “historic”, etc meant to imply the “status”/track of the RFC. If so, Section 4 or 5 of RFC2026 defines those formally. [Roman] Note my comment above that “Specification Required” would allow for documents which aren’t RFC. As such, those status/track designations would not be meaningful. Regards, Roman
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