Internet DRAFT - draft-nottingham-where-does-that-come-from
draft-nottingham-where-does-that-come-from
Network Working Group M. Nottingham
Internet-Draft 12 March 2021
Intended status: Informational
Expires: 13 September 2021
Clarifying IETF Document Status
draft-nottingham-where-does-that-come-from-00
Abstract
There is widespread confusion about the status of Internet-Drafts and
RFCs, especially regarding their association with the IETF and other
streams. This document recommends several interventions to more
closely align reader perceptions with actual document status.
Note to Readers
_RFC EDITOR: please remove this section before publication_
The issues list for this draft can be found at
https://github.com/mnot/I-D/labels/where-does-that-come-from
(https://github.com/mnot/I-D/labels/where-does-that-come-from).
The most recent (often, unpublished) draft is at
https://mnot.github.io/I-D/where-does-that-come-from/
(https://mnot.github.io/I-D/where-does-that-come-from/).
Recent changes are listed at https://github.com/mnot/I-D/commits/gh-
pages/where-does-that-come-from (https://github.com/mnot/I-D/commits/
gh-pages/where-does-that-come-from).
See also the draft's current status in the IETF datatracker, at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-where-does-that-
come-from/ (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-where-
does-that-come-from/).
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/.
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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 13 September 2021.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 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
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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
1.1. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1.1. Proposal 1: logo usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1.2. Proposal 2: visual distinction . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.3. Proposal 3: domain usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Internet-Drafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2.1. Proposal 4: logo usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2.2. Proposal 5: visual distinction . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2.3. Proposal 6: domain usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2.4. Proposal 7: boilerplate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
There is widespread confusion about the status of Internet-Drafts and
RFCs -- specifically, regarding their association with the IETF and
other streams. It is commonly perceived that all RFCs and all
Internet-Drafts are associated with and approved by the IETF.
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This is likely due to the conflation of the IETF and RFC brands; most
people think of them in close association, and do not appreciate the
concept of streams, because it is not surfaced obviously in the
documents. These impressions are reinforced by our reuse of IETF
infrastructure for publishing and managing drafts on other streams,
as well as drafts on no stream.
These observations are not new. In the past, changes to boilerplate
have been proposed and implemented to distinguish document status.
However, the current boilerplate is obscure; it requires a knowledge
of the Internet Standards Process to interpret, and furthermore, many
readers gloss over boilerplate language.
This problem is also important to solve. Beyond confusion in the
press and by implementers, standards-based interoperability is
increasingly being considered by competition regulators as a remedy
to abuse of power in Internet-related markets. Consensus status and
stream association is critical to their interpretation of a given
specification.
Additionally, the still in-progress change to the v3 format for
Internet-Drafts and RFCs affords an opportunity to adjust how these
documents are rendered in a manner that leads to more appropriate
perceptions about their status.
Therefore, Section 2 contains several recommendations for strong,
clear interventions along these lines.
1.1. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
2. Recommendations
2.1. RFCs
The following recommendations apply to the publication of RFCs.
2.1.1. Proposal 1: logo usage
The purpose of this proposal is to create a strong, clear link
between document status and logo usage.
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The IETF, IRTF and IAB stream managers MUST ask the RFC Editor to
place their respective logos on HTML, HTMLized and PDF renderings of
RFCs on the applicable stream, and only on those documents. The logo
should be displayed prominently at the top of the document.
The Independent Submissions Editor MAY designate a logo for
equivalent use.
The tools team is directed to honour these requests in any renderings
of these RFCs on sites under their control. This includes the
negative condition; i.e., IETF, IRTF, and IAB logos should not appear
on or in association with RFCs on other streams.
2.1.2. Proposal 2: visual distinction
The purpose of this proposal is to create a strong, clear link
between document status and document presentation.
The RFC Editor is directed to propose stream-specific presentation of
RFCs that vary in visually significant ways; e.g., use of typeface,
decoration, formatting such as alignment and spacing, and other
typographic controls.
2.1.3. Proposal 3: domain usage
The purpose of this proposal is to create a strong, clear link
between document status and the domain name(s) where the document is
found.
The IETF, IRTF and IAB stream managers SHOULD designate what
hostname(s) RFCs from their streams are to be available upon.
Initially, this is likely to be datatracker.ietf.org, although stream
managers might designate a more specific place (such as
specs.irtf.org) instead of or in addition to that location.
The Independent Submission Editor SHOULD designate what hostname(s)
RFCs from their stream are to be available upon, if any. Independent
Submissions MUST NOT be designated to appear on ietf.org, irtf.org or
iab.org hostnames.
The tools team is directed to assure that these instructions are
carried out - in particular, that each stream's RFCs appear only on
the designated hostnames (within the scope of hostnames that the
tools team has access to), and RFCs from other streams do not appear
on the designated hostnames.
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Note that placeholder documents MAY be used to indicate where a
document on another stream can be found, while clearly stating that
the target document is not associated with the stream in question;
however, automatic redirects MUST NOT be used.
Note that if a stream manager does not indicate any domains for such
use, it implies that those RFCs will only appear on rfc-editor.org,
not any tools team-controlled sites.
2.2. Internet-Drafts
The following recommendations apply to the publication of Internet-
Drafts.
2.2.1. Proposal 4: logo usage
The purpose of this proposal is to create a strong, clear link
between document status and logo usage.
The tools team is directed to display the logos of the IETF, IRTF and
IAB prominently at the top of HTML, HTMLized, and PDF renderings of
Internet-Drafts on those streams (using the appropriate logo), and
only drafts on those streams. These logos should not appear anywhere
on documents that are not on these streams, nor should the appear on
pages associated with them (e.g., datatracker metadata).
2.2.2. Proposal 5: visual distinction
The purpose of this proposal is to create a strong, clear link
between document status and document presentation.
The tools team is directed to propose stream-specific presentation of
Internet-Drafts that vary in visually significant ways; e.g., use of
typeface, decoration (e.g., 'DRAFT' background images), formatting
such as alignment and spacing, and other typographic controls.
2.2.3. Proposal 6: domain usage
The purpose of this proposal is to create a strong, clear link
between document status and the domain name(s) where the document
(and metadata about it) is found.
The tools team is directed to request control of the 'internet-
drafts.org' domain name from ISOC (with assistance from the LLC), and
to use this domain for publishing drafts not associated with a
stream, along with any other material generic to Internet-Drafts
(such as the master index of drafts). Drafts on a given stream MAY
be published there with consent from that stream's manager.
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The IETF, IRTF and IAB stream managers MAY designate what hostname(s)
Internet-Drafts on their streams are to be available upon.
Initially, this is likely to be datatracker.ietf.org, although stream
managers might designate a more specific place (such as
drafts.irtf.org) instead of or in addition to that location.
The Independent Submission Editor MAY designate a hostname that
Internet-Drafts from their stream are to be available upon.
Independent Submissions MUST NOT be designated to appear on ietf.org,
irtf.org or iab.org hostnames.
The tools team is directed to assure that these instructions are
carried out - in particular, that each stream's drafts appear only on
the designated hostnames (within the scope of hostnames that the
tools team has access to), and drafts from other streams do not
appear on the designated hostnames.
Note that placeholder documents MAY be used to indicate where a
document on another stream can be found (including on internet-
drafts.org), while clearly stating that the target document is not
associated with the stream in question; however, automatic redirects
MUST NOT be used.
2.2.4. Proposal 7: boilerplate
The purpose of this proposal is to create a strong, clear statement
of the document's actual association (or lack thereof) with a stream
in its boilerplate.
The tools team is directed to modify this text in the Internet-Draft
boilerplate:
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/.
to, in the case of IETF stream documents:
This Internet-Draft is a working document of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other parties are able to distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://internet-drafts.org/drafts/current/.
in the case of IRTF stream documents:
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This Internet-Draft is a working document of the Internet Research
Task Force (IRTF). Note that other parties are able to distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://internet-drafts.org/drafts/current/.
in the case of IAB stream documents:
This Internet-Draft is a working document of the Internet Architecture
Board (IAB). Note that other parties are able to distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://internet-drafts.org/drafts/current/.
in the case of Independent stream documents:
This Internet-Draft is an Independent Submission for publication in the
RFC Series. Note that other parties are able to distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://internet-drafts.org/drafts/current/.
in the case of documents not associated with a stream:
This Internet-Draft is a working document that has not been adopted
by any stream that would lead to RFC publication. The list of current
Internet-Drafts is at https://internet-drafts.org/drafts/current/.
3. Security Considerations
This document has no direct security impact.
4. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
Author's Address
Mark Nottingham
Prahran VIC
Australia
Email: mnot@mnot.net
URI: https://www.mnot.net/
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