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Checking references for intended status: Best Current Practice ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (See RFCs 3967 and 4897 for information about using normative references to lower-maturity documents in RFCs) No issues found here. Summary: 0 errors (**), 0 flaws (~~), 1 warning (==), 2 comments (--). Run idnits with the --verbose option for more detailed information about the items above. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 Network Working Group J. M. Halpern, Ed. 3 Internet-Draft Ericsson 4 Updates: 2026 (if approved) E. K. Rescorla, Ed. 5 Intended status: Best Current Practice Mozilla 6 Expires: 24 July 2020 21 January 2020 8 IETF Stream Documents Require IETF Rough Consensus 9 draft-halpern-gendispatch-consensusinformational-02 11 Abstract 13 This document proposes that the IETF never publish any IETF stream 14 RFCs without IETF rough consensus. This updates RFC 2026. 16 Status of This Memo 18 This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the 19 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 21 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 22 Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute 23 working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- 24 Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 26 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months 27 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any 28 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 29 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 31 This Internet-Draft will expire on 24 July 2020. 33 Copyright Notice 35 Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the 36 document authors. All rights reserved. 38 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal 39 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/ 40 license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. 41 Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights 42 and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components 43 extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text 44 as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are 45 provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. 47 Table of Contents 49 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 50 2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 51 3. Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 52 4. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 53 5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 54 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 55 7. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 56 8. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 57 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 59 1. Introduction 61 IETF procedures, as defined by [RFC2026] allow for Informational or 62 Experimental RFCs to be published without IETF rough consensus. For 63 context, it should be remembered that this RFC predates the 64 separation of the various streams (e.g. IRTF, IAB, and Independent.) 65 When it was written, there were only "RFC"s. 67 As a consequence, it is currently permitted for the IETF to approve 68 an Internet Draft for publication as an RFC without IETF rough 69 consensus. 71 2. Terminology 73 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 74 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and 75 "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 76 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all 77 capitals, as shown here. 79 3. Proposal 81 The IETF MUST NOT publish RFCs on the IETF stream without 82 establishing IETF rough consensus for publication. 84 4. Discussion 86 The current procedures permit such publication. In 2007 the IESG 87 issued a statement saying that no document will be issued without 88 first conducting an IETF Last Call [IESG-STATE-AD]. While this 89 apparently improves the situation, looking closely it makes it worse. 90 Rather than publishing documents without verifying that there is 91 rough consensus, as the wording in [RFC2026] suggests, this has the 92 IESG explicitly publishing documents on the IETF stream that have 93 failed to achieve rough consensus. 95 One could argue that there is a need for publishing some documents 96 that the community can not agree on. However, we have an explicit 97 procedure for such publication, namely the Independent Stream. Or, 98 for research documents, the IRTF stream, which explicitly publishes 99 many minority opinion Informational RFCs. 101 If this proposal is not accepted, there is still a minor problem to 102 be addressed. When a non-consensus document is published, the 103 current boilerplate simply omits the sentence claiming that there is 104 consensus. If the community feels that we need to keep the right for 105 the IESG to publish Informational or Experimental RFCs without IETF 106 rough consensus, then please, the IAB SHOULD use its authorithy over 107 the boilerplate for RFCs to make the boilerplate explicit rather than 108 relying on readers to detect a missing sentence. 110 Editors Note: The above paragraph and this note should be removed 111 prior to publication as an RFC, as the paragraph will then be OBE. 113 5. IANA Considerations 115 No values are assigned in this document, no registries are created, 116 and there is no action assigned to the IANA by this document. 118 6. Security Considerations 120 This document introduces no new security considerations. It is a 121 process document about changes to the rules for certain corner cases 122 in publishing IETF stream RFCs. 124 7. Normative References 126 [RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 127 3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996, 128 . 130 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate 131 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, 132 DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, 133 . 135 [RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 136 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, 137 May 2017, . 139 8. Informative References 141 [IESG-STATE-AD] 142 "IESG Statement on Guidance on Area Director Sponsoring of 143 Documents", 144 . 147 Authors' Addresses 149 Joel M. Halpern (editor) 150 Ericsson 151 P. O. Box 6049 152 Leesburg, VA 20178 153 United States of America 155 Email: joel.halpern@ericsson.com 157 Eric K. Rescorla (editor) 158 Mozilla 159 331 E. Evelyn Ave 160 Mountain View, CA 94101 161 United States of America 163 Email: ekr@rtfm.com