Re: Topic drift Re: An Internet Draft as reference material

[Keith Moore]

> It's not merely that I-D's are already archived, albeit inconveniently
> and obscurely.  

yes, but IETF isn't (yet) maintaining public archives, so IETF doesn't
(yet) have the liability of breaking its agreement to expire the draft
after six months.

I agree that anyone who expects an I-D to completely disappear is naive.
But the real issues here are IETF's legal liability and loss of faith.

> Essentially all I-D's that are submitted with the
> expectation something very similar to their contents will become an RFC.

statistics by themselves would make that a fairly naive expectation.
but it is not really relevant.  there are folks who are quite 
willing for IETF to publish their documents as RFCs if they are approved,
but would prefer that their documents not be archived if they are not
approved.  it's sort of a "either give my document the respect it 
deserves or you can't have it at all" mentality.  and the author clearly
has the right to do that.  (though since the days of required boilerplate,
perhaps only if he limits IETF's rights to publish as an Internet-Draft). 

> The only "right" of an I-D author that might be violated by the IETF
> keeping a copy of an I-D as an I-D instead of as an RFC is the "right" to
> not look like a fool or not have the world know what fraction of the
> author's ideas are bad or unpopular.

are you willing to accept IETF's liability should a court decide otherwise?

Keith