Re: draft-zigmond-tv-url-02 discussion on ietf@ietf.org

At 01:59 PM 8/22/1999 -0700, Michael A. Dolan wrote:
>We seem to also keep coming back to the technical merits of the
>submission.  RFC 2026, sections 4.2.2 and 4.2.3 describe the process
>to be used for Informational submissions.  There does not appear to
>be any requirement to obtain technical concensus or approval of the
>group, in fact there are clear statements to the contrary.

An easy way around the problem for this draft is to have the discussion 
about the merits and demerits of the draft be discussed *off* the IETF 
mailing list by interested parties. You already have a mailing list in 
place for this, which is better than many folks who toss drafts over the 
transom for publication. In the -03 draft, list the subscription 
information for the mailing list, list the archive information 
(<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tv/>), and give people plenty of 
time to discuss the -03 draft. Urge them to read the archive first so they 
know what has already been said.

I see a few possible outcomes of doing this:

- The discussion brings up changes that you agree need to be made to the 
spec. You fix them before submitting it again for publication.

- The discussion convinces you that the spec is indeed broken, but you 
believe that the current (broken) spec is already is in significant use. 
You submit the broken spec with an explicit statement that it is broken and 
is only being published for interoperability purposes, and you start work 
on a new spec with the input from the group.

The IESG can handle either case if you document it well. Be open about what 
suggestions you didn't put in to whatever you submit. This will help them 
decide what they want to suggest to the RFC Editor.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

Received on Sunday, 22 August 1999 18:35:06 UTC