Subject: [apps-discuss] What BCP 26 says about well-known IANA registration policies

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2012 17:21:16 -0400

> Pete, most of this discussion has focused on "what 3864 says"
> and on when we are going to get a 3864bis and what is in it.  I
> think that is incorrect.  I think the real issue here is in RFC
> 5226 and its failure to either explicitly discuss the
> relationship between the "Expert Review" category and requests
> that satisfy one or more of the "RFC Required", "IETF Review",
> "Standards Action", and "IESG Approval" ones or to spell out how
> combinations can and should be specified.

Indeed.  And I have added the following section to
draft-leiba-cotton-iana-5226bis-01, along with appropriate references
to it from elsewhere in the document:

---------------------------------------------
4.3.  Using Multiple Policies in Combination

   It is often desirable to allow registrations through the normal IETF
   process, and to also provide a mechanism for registration outside the
   process.  Thus, a particular registry might want to use a policy such
   as "RFC Required" or "IETF Review" sometimes, with a designated
   expert checking a "Specification Required" policy at other times.
   Such combinations are frequently appropriate, and are encouraged.

   The alternative to using a combination requires either that all
   requests come through RFCs or that requests in RFCs go through review
   by the designated expert, despite the review and consensus that RFCs
   represent.

   For example, if it is felt that IETF consensus will provide good
   review for a particular registry, but we expect frequent
   registrations from other SDOs and we do not want those other
   organizations always to be required to go through the IETF RFC
   process, we might put the following in the IANA Considerations
   section when we create the registry:

      IANA is asked to create the registry "Fruit Access Flags" as a
      sub-registry of "Fruit Parameters".  New registrations will be
      permitted through either the IETF Review policy or the
      Specification Required policy [BCP26].

   Such combinations will commonly use one of {Standards Action, IETF
   Review, RFC Required} in combination with one of {Specification
   Required, Expert Review}.
---------------------------------------------

> For example, if
> something is identified as "IESG Approval" and the document that
> modifies the registry is approved on the standards track, is
> IANA required to demand that the IESG pass a separate resolution
> approving the change?  To me, that would be a new low in the
> "process over good sense" battle, but some of the comments on
> this thread would predict exactly that.

Because any IETF Stream RFC has IESG approval, your example reduces to
IANA simply asking the question during last call, to ensure that the
IESG notices the issue.  Don't worry about those sorts of silliness.

> So, IMO, we need to fix 5226 sooner or later.  I'll happily
> leave it up to the IESG whether that fix must also explicitly
> update all relevant registration documents including 3864.

We're working on doing it sooner, but I've had exactly NO responses to
this message:
   http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg74180.html
...which I posted two months ago now.  I'll go ahead and post -01
now(-ish), just to re-awaken things; why not?

[Please do NOT discuss draft-leiba-cotton-iana-5226bis itself here;
take that to <[email-masked]>.]

Barry