Internet-Drafts Don't Expire
draft-thomson-gendispatch-no-expiry-00

Abstract

The long-standing insistence that Internet-Drafts carry expiration dates is a concept that is no longer necessary. This document removes requirements for expiration for Internet-Drafts from RFC 2418/BCP 25.

Note to Readers

Discussion of this document takes place on the GENDISPATCH Working Group mailing list (gendispatch@ietf.org), which is archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/gendispatch/.

Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/martinthomson/no-expiry.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

This Internet-Draft will expire on May 7, 2020.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Removing Internet-Draft Expiration
• 3. Security and Privacy Considerations
• 4. IANA Considerations
• 5. Normative References
• Author's Address

1. Introduction

The I-D Guidelines declares that Internet Drafts expire 185 days after their posting unless replaced or under a range of special conditions, such as when the document is under IESG review.

Expiration of drafts is believed to encourage authors to update drafts that they wish to discuss. Expired drafts are no longer served from the primary IETF servers.

Copies of expired drafts are retained and can be obtained using other services. Expired drafts are routinely cited and referenced. Published RFCs routinely include informative references to drafts, which then usually expire.

Forced expiration serves no purpose that is not adequately served by the publication date on the document.

2. Removing Internet-Draft Expiration

The date of posting for an Internet-Draft is sufficient information for readers to understand validity.

This document proposes that the “Expires:” field be removed from the header of submitted Internet-Drafts, and that the boilerplate be amended as follows:

OLD:

• Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as “work in progress.”

NEW:

• Internet-Drafts are draft documents that may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as “work in progress.”

Creating a revision to the I-D Guidelines will be necessary to remove references to expiration.

This document updates RFC 2418 [WG] to remove a single mention of expiration from Section 7.2.

3. Security and Privacy Considerations

This document has no direct implications on security or privacy.

4. IANA Considerations

This document makes no request of IANA.

5. Normative References

Author's Address