Keith Moore wrote:
>
> I would strongly object to a change to our process that removed
> the requirement to demonstrate interoperability.
>
> If we need additional incentives to advancement, perhaps we should
> require that proposed standards revert to informational or historic
> if no action is taken within three years.
> (action being: recycle at proposed, advance to draft)
As I understand it, the original draft requirement (demonstrating interop)
was to improve the specification in several aspects:
- ensure that there are implementations of the specification,
because implementing a spec is a good method to uncover inconsistencies,
ambiguities and contradictions
- ensure that there are multiple independent implementations in order
to find out whether independent implementers understand the spec
in the same fashion.
- find out which of the (interoperable) features of a spec are necessary
and which one are more in the direction of bloat
Recycling a spec on proposed will primarily add new features, and include
errata and potential clarifications, but rarely drop features.
Therefore I'm no sure that "recycling" at proposed should be considered
a valid substitute for a demonstration of interoperability between
independent implementations. At least, there should be a limit as to
how often recycling a spec at proposed should "exempt" a working group
from demonstrating interoperability.
Otherwise, there might grow a disconnect between the most recent spec
and what is most commonly used on the internet. The TLS protocol is
a victim of the "recycle at proposed" rather than performing serious
interop testing. With the result that the most recent spec is
TLS v1.2 (08/2008), whereas the protocol version that is most widely
used, and the _only_ TLS protocol version that can be safely used by
a client that does not implement an application-level reconnect
fallback is TLS v1.0 (01/1999). If the forward extensibility options
in the TLS protocol had been more appropriately interop tested in
the years after TLSv1.0, this problem would likely be *much* smaller.
The PKIX Interet Certificate and CRL Profile has similar being
recycled at proposed serveral times (2459,3280,5280), and has
grown feature bloat rather than seen cleanup & feature reduction.
-Martin
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