Re: The Non-IETF Informational RFC Publication Fiction
On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 15:01:23 -, Mohsen BANAN-Public [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: The Real component is that IETF/IESG/IAB is well on its way towards becoming a cult violating all published procedures. IETF/IESG/IAB now claims full ownership of the RFC Publication process and quashes Of course it has full ownership. They're *IETF* RFCs after all. Just like Microsoft claims ownership of Microsoft documentation, and the ITU claims ownership of its recommendations, and the W3C claims ownership of its stuff. whatever may want to compete with it or that it does not Umm.. "quash"? Recently, we've even handed off HTML to the W3C. We've not managed to get rid of the ITU, or IEEE, or ANSI yet either. like. IETF/IESG/IAB often inserts notes in Non-IETF Informational RFCs which go above and beyond the scope and purpose of IESG Be glad that the RFC's don't get the markup they so often richly deserve. review. IETF/IESG/IAB often regards the RFC-Editor as merely its agent. IESG/IAB has become a group of irresponsible volunteers who Umm.. Mohsen? THe RFC Editor *IS* an agent of the IETF/IESG/IAB. That's been understood for well over a decade. 1120 Internet Activities Board. V. Cerf. Sep-01-1989. (Format: TXT=26123 bytes) (Obsoleted by RFC1160) (Status: INFORMATIONAL) Read section 2... That's the last I'm going to say on it - although I was prepared to file this whole thread under "substantiative disagreement", it's tipped well into "loon filter time" -- Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech PGP signature
Re: The Non-IETF Informational RFC Publication Fiction
* * The Real component is that IETF/IESG/IAB is well on its way towards * becoming a cult violating all published procedures. IETF/IESG/IAB now * claims full ownership of the RFC Publication process and quashes * whatever may want to compete with it or that it does not * like. IETF/IESG/IAB often inserts notes in Non-IETF Informational RFCs * which go above and beyond the scope and purpose of IESG * review. IETF/IESG/IAB often regards the RFC-Editor as merely its * agent. IESG/IAB has become a group of irresponsible volunteers who * consider themselves accountable to no one. * Mohsen, One of the advantages of becoming a geezer is that you get to say what you REALLY think. However, good taste prevents my telling you in public what I REALLY think about your message. I would like to remind you that, had the RFC Editor been "a mere agent" of the IESG, your EMSD RFC 2524 would not have been published at all. Bob Braden
Re: The Non-IETF Informational RFC Publication Fiction
On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 15:48:50 GMT, Bob Braden [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Mohsen Mohsen The Real component is that IETF/IESG/IAB is well on its way towards Mohsen becoming a cult violating all published procedures. IETF/IESG/IAB now Mohsen claims full ownership of the RFC Publication process and quashes Mohsen whatever may want to compete with it or that it does not Mohsen like. IETF/IESG/IAB often inserts notes in Non-IETF Informational RFCs Mohsen which go above and beyond the scope and purpose of IESG Mohsen review. IETF/IESG/IAB often regards the RFC-Editor as merely its Mohsen agent. IESG/IAB has become a group of irresponsible volunteers who Mohsen consider themselves accountable to no one. Mohsen Bob Mohsen, Bob One of the advantages of becoming a geezer is that you get to say what Bob you REALLY think. However, good taste prevents my telling you in public Bob what I REALLY think about your message. Bob I would like to remind you that, had the RFC Editor been "a mere Bob agent" of the IESG, your EMSD RFC 2524 would not have been Bob published at all. That is true. In the case of RFC-2524, the RFC Editor did demonstrate independence. I believe I also played a significant role in establishing the RFC Editor's independence based on my insistence on doing it by the book. Complete communication records related to publication of RFC-2524 are available through http://www.emsd.org/ In the case of RFC-2188, the RFC Editor did *nothing* and just waited for the IESG for more than 7 months. That is well documented. I have heard of various other reports of IESG's interference. See DJB's case study for example ... My exact words were: Mohsen IETF/IESG/IAB often regards the RFC-Editor as merely its agent. ^ That is why I said, "often". ...Mohsen.
Re: The Non-IETF Informational RFC Publication Fiction
Date: 27 Jun 2000 16:38:48 - From: Mohsen BANAN-Public [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The Non-IETF Informational RFC Publication Fiction [...] I believe I also played a significant role in establishing the RFC Editor's independence based on my insistence on doing it by the book. [...] And, Al Gore is the father of the Internet... -tjs
Re: The Non-IETF Informational RFC Publication Fiction
% If I were to suggest any change in the RFC review and publication process, % it would be to give IESG the power to say "no" to publication of individual % submissions. (perhaps with the possibility of formal appeal to IAB) % I do not believe that IESG would do this capriciously, and I believe % that this would make better use of IESG resources. And such a change would % make it quite clear that individuals authors do NOT have the right to have % their documents published as RFCs. % % Keith (no longer on IESG, and not speaking for them) I think things are headed in that general direction and I think it is a sad state of affairs. Historically, RFCs were used to document ideas, both good and bad. The series covered the range of idea generation and expression and this was encouraged by the RFC editor. Now, many "non-conformant" ideas are being released into the community as defacto documents since it is too hard to get material documented in the RFC series as either informational or experimental. This is in part due to the IESG/IAB review cycle that is now part of the process. This practice leads to closed environments, documentation, code and operations. Not what I would have hoped for in an evolved Internet. --bill
Re: The Non-IETF Informational RFC Publication Fiction
Not what I would have hoped for in an evolved Internet. A lot has changed in the past 30 years. The notion that 'anything is fair game' in the RFC series made a lot more sense when the Internet was just an experimental network, and when packet-switched newtorking was brand new. In such an environment one could make the argument that all experiments in using the network were more-or-less equally valid. These days the value in the RFC series is not that it is a central repository for everything having to do with Internet protocols (as if such a repository were even feasible!) but that documents in the series are likely to be relevant and of reasonable quality. Indeed, were it not for the efforts of the RFC Editor and IESG to maintain a high quality document series, folks wouldn't be nearly so interested in having their documents published as RFCs. Keith
Re: The Non-IETF Informational RFC Publication Fiction
Keith Moore wrote: These days the value in the RFC series is not that it is a central repository for everything having to do with Internet protocols (as if such a repository were even feasible!) but that documents in the series are likely to be relevant and of reasonable quality. Indeed, were it not for the efforts of the RFC Editor and IESG to maintain a high quality document series, folks wouldn't be nearly so interested in having their documents published as RFCs. There are plenty of publication venues available for network protocols. Even those without access to a local tech report service can avail themselves of, say, www.arXive.org, where entries are cataloged and announced to interested parties. There are about 50,000 networking-related papers in my network bibliography (http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/netbib) and it is far from complete, containing mostly journal and peer-reviewed conference articles (as well as RFCs). [That said, additions are much appreciated.] Should everyone of them be an RFC? Why? Every journal and conference worth reading/attending has an editorial board or technical program committee. The review process for these typically takes from six months to a year or more, with rejection ratios of 70 to 90% not uncommon. Compared to that, the threshold and review for informational RFCs is pretty low (too low, if you like). Keith - This message was passed through [EMAIL PROTECTED], which is a sublist of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Not all messages are passed. Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Harald Alvestrand. -- Henning Schulzrinne http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs
Re: The Non-IETF Informational RFC Publication Fiction
From: Bill Manning [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... I think things are headed in that general direction and I think it is a sad state of affairs. Historically, RFCs were used to document ideas, both good and bad. The series covered the range of idea generation and expression and this was encouraged by the RFC editor. Now, many "non-conformant" ideas are being released into the community as defacto documents since it is too hard to get material documented in the RFC series as either informational or experimental. This is in part due to the IESG/IAB review cycle that is now part of the process. The alternative is many more and far worse circuses. What happens when someone writes something like draft-terrell-logic-analy-bin-ip-spec-ipv7-ipv8-08.txt without what seems to be that author's non-confrontational nature but with the attitudes of D.J.Burnstein and Mohsen BANAN? In the old days, the IETF was in fact closed because no one knew about it, and the RFC editors did real editing. The barriers to outsiders in 1986 were informal but much higher than they are now. Even had he heard of RFC's and wanted to publish some ideas as one 1985, Mohsen BANAN could not have, at least not in the forms the modern IETF allowed. As the public discovered TCP/IP, the RFC printing press was in effect forced open. The relatively recent attempt to make the IETF a free vanity publisher is a growing, inevitable disaster that pleases no one. Things have changed in the last 15 or 20 years. The publishing services of the IETF and (and ISI) are no longer needed except for official products of working groups and perhaps except for open mailing lists. Each of us can trivially operate our own vanity publishing houses. Consider how very much better things would have been for everyone including Mohsen BANAN had the IETF said "those ideas are interesting, but until they have been implementated and tested, and thereby attracted an IETF Working Group to sponsoring them, all we can do is suggest that you mention a mailing list and URL for your documents in the IETF mailing lists." And similarly for TAP vs. Ident and whichever other excitements involving DJB that Mohsen BANAN is talking about. This practice leads to closed environments, documentation, code and operations. Not what I would have hoped for in an evolved Internet. That is clearly wrong at least about code. Close vs. open code has nothing one way or another to do with the IETF's publishing polices, as demonstrated by the closed and open implementations of offical IETF protocols, not to mention the "individual submissions." Besides, there has been practically no code ever published by the IETF. I suspect one RFC contains most of the code in all existing RFC's. It's also not clear that open publishing leads to open protocols or anything else besides open (esp. vanity) publishing. Contrast the protocols that Microsoft has described with RFC's with the availability of source implementing them and the chance of anyone outside Redmod fixing or convincing anyone to fix even their most egregious and obvious bugs. What made sense as a semi-formal way to slightly polish items discussed in mailing lists has nothing to do with the polices, procedures and even goals of a competitor or co-equal of the ANSI and IEEE and member of the ITU. The IETF should keep the best parts of the RFC process, including free access to RFC text. However, for better or worse, the IETF doesn't have the organization, policies, procedures, people, or billing systems to operate a major vanity press catering to the under appreciated computer geniuses of the world. Vernon Schryver[EMAIL PROTECTED]
