Re: References to prior work

[Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell at cs.tcd.ie>]

John C Klensin wrote:
> --On Monday, 05 March, 2007 09:19 -0800 Paul Hoffman
> <paul.hoffman at vpnc.org> wrote:
>
> > At 8:53 AM -0800 3/5/07, Bob Braden wrote:
> > >   *> FWIW, I don't think we want to start bouncing specs
> > >   because they *> don't pay homage - in this case all the
> > >   similarities are probably *> the only obvious ways to add
> > >   authorization tokens to a TLS *> handshake. Such downrefs
> > >   to dead documents would anyway add yet *> more cruft to the
> > >   RFC process, so let's not.
> > >   *>
> > >   *> S.
> > >   *>
> > >
> > > s/cruft/integrity/
> > How does adding a downref to a dead document add more
> > integrity to the RFC process?
>
> Independent of the merits in this particular case, it provides
> history and context.   We have learned, or should have learned,
> two things over and over again:
>
> 	(1) Failure to provide context and a track through
> 	rejected and alternative suggestions results in "new"
> 	proposals to try the same things again, usually from
> 	people who had no idea about the prior work.
> 	
> 	(2) Providing good documentation that recognizes the
> 	origins of an idea and its date, even if there were some
> 	changes from the original version, can be very helpful
> 	in defending our work against patent vultures who try to
> 	make filings on work that the IETF has had under
> 	development for some time.  Personally, I've reached the
> 	point that I would favor having most protocol
> 	specification RFCs contain a sentence of the form of
> 	"The work described here derives from a series of
> 	earlier drafts, including [ref, ref, ref] the first of
> 	which was circulated in 1968."

I think something along these lines might be ok, so long as
its not a significant barrier to progress - I'd hate if every
new author had to be an I-D historian, or if anyone who wanted
to slow down a document could play the system using this. I
have a hard time seeing how that can be done.

Anyway, I think this is an area where the tools team could
come to the rescue yet again, given the right set of
requirements, maybe e.g. including a link to an auto
generated list with the IETF LC announcement. (Before
anyone asks: I'm not volunteering, but would be happy
to chat about it over beer in Prague.)

S.


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