Internet DRAFT - draft-levine-iduse
draft-levine-iduse
Network Working Group J. Levine
Internet-Draft Standcore LLC
Updates: 2026 (if approved) 31 January 2024
Intended status: Best Current Practice
Expires: 3 August 2024
Update to the use of Internet-Drafts in the Internet Standards Process
draft-levine-iduse-01
Abstract
This memo updates the way that Internet-Drafts are used in the
Internet Standards Process.
Rather than expiring, Internet-Drafts are marked Active or Inactive.
Also, the rules for referencing Internet-Drafts in other documents
are clarified.
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 3 August 2024.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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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 Revised BSD License text as
described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Active and Inactive Drafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1. How Drafts Expire Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. Making Drafts Active or Inactive . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.3. Draft changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Referencing an Internet-Draft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Changes to the boilerplate text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1. Introduction
Section 2 of [RFC2026] describes the way that Internet-Drafts are
used in the standards process. It says that after six months, an I-D
"is simply removed from the Internet-Drafts directory." It also says
in a highlighted box "Under no circumstances should an Internet-Draft
be referenced by any paper, report, or Request-for-Proposal." In
practice, neither of those have turned out to be true.
This memo creates an Active flag to indicate whether an I-D is
currently active. It also updates the advice about referencing I-Ds
to reflect existing practice.
This memo does not use RFC2119 keywords because it's not about
technical interoperation.
[[ please remove this section before publication ]]
The no-draft-expiry@ietf.org mailing list would be a good place to
argue about this draft.
2. Active and Inactive Drafts
Drafts will no longer expire, and instead are marked Active or
Inactive to indicate whether the authors are still likely to be
working on them.
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2.1. How Drafts Expire Now
When the xmlrfc version of an I-D is rendered into text, HTML, or
PDF, the headings in the rendered version include an an "Expired:"
line with a date six months after the date that the I-D was rendered.
The "Status of This Memo" boilerplate states that the draft is valid
for a maximum of six months, and "It is inappropriate to use
Internet-Drafts as reference material or other than 'work in
progress'".
Currently, the IETF stores in the IETF's Datatracker indefinitely.
If more than six months have passed since the I-D was submitted and
the I-D has not been superseded, the Datatracker shows an orange
warning box saying "This Internet-Draft is no longer active" but
still contains the same links to display the I-D. The rsync server
at rsync.ietf.org contains one collection "internet-drafts" with
currently active I-Ds, i.e., ones that are less than six months old
and have not been superseded, and another collection "id-archive"
which contains drafts as far back as 1992.
Once an I-D has expired, the only way to get it out of expired status
is to submit a new version of the I-D, which may be identical other
than the version number.
2.2. Making Drafts Active or Inactive
Internet-Drafts will no longer have an expiration date. When a draft
is submitted, it is marked Active. The IESG may set the details of
when drafts subsequently become Inactive or Active, but here are some
suggestions:
If a draft is superseded, it becomes Inactive.
After a draft has been Active for six months and is not adopted by a
working group or the analogous state in other streams, it becomes
Inactive.
Authors of a draft that is Inactive but not superseded can make it
Active again and the six month timer restarts. There is no limit to
how many times a draft can be marked Active. It would be nice to
send a courtesy notification when a draft is about to become Inactive
so the author can restart the timer.
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2.3. Draft changes
The XML and rendered copies of drafts continue to have the date that
the draft was submiteed, but no expiration date. If technically
feasible, e.g., in HTML, it would be nice if there were a way to
query and display the Active/Inactive status and history of the
draft, perhaps by clicking a button in the boilerplate.
3. Referencing an Internet-Draft
In some cases it is acceptable to use an Internet-Draft as a
reference in another document.
Internet-Drafts can reference other I-Ds without limit. (Drafts in a
cluster reference each other with the expectation that the references
will change to RFCs when published.) RFCs can use Internet-Drafts as
informative references but not as normative ones.
4. Changes to the boilerplate text
The "Status of This Memo" boilerplate inserted into rendered versions
of Internet-Drafts will be changed to reflect the changes in
Section 2 and Section 3. The new text is:
TBD
5. Security considerations
This memo only changes some details of the Internet Standards
editorial process and should have no effect on the security of the
Internet.
6. Informative References
[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2026>.
Author's Address
John Levine
Standcore LLC
Email: standards@standcore.com
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