Subject: [spfbis] FW: Proposed IESG Statement on the Conclusion of Experiments

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:38:28 +0000

Perhaps some of this is relevant to what we're doing in the experiment document.  Timely...

-MSK

Subject: Proposed IESG Statement on the Conclusion of Experiments
From: Adrian Farrel <[email-masked]>
To: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:31:14 +0000
List-Id: IETF-Discussion <ietf.ietf.org>

All,

The IESG has been discussing how to tidy up after Experimental RFCs.

We have developed the following draft IESG statement. This does not 
represent a change in process, and continues to value Experimental RFCs
as an important part of the IETF process. It does, however, seek to 
encourage documentation of the conclusion of experiments.

We are aware that there may be other discussion points around 
Experimental RFCs, and we would like to discuss these, but we also
believe that there is merit in making small, incremental improvements.

The IESG would welcome your thoughts on this draft before they approve
the final text on April 26th.

Thanks,
Adrian

=============

IESG Statement on Conclusion of IETF Experiments

Experiments are an established and valuable part of the IETF process.
A number of core Internet protocols were first published as Experimental
RFCs while the community gathered experience and carefully investigated
the consequences of deploying new mechanisms within the Internet.

In the case where an experiment leads on to the development of a      
Standards Track RFC documenting a protocol, the new RFC obsoletes the 
old Experimental RFC and there is a clear conclusion to the experiment.

However, many experiments do not lead to the development of Standards
Track RFCs. Instead, the work may be abandoned through lack of interest
or because important lessons have been learned.

It is currently hard to distinguish between an experiment that is still
being investigated, and an old experiment that has ceased to be of
interest to the community. In both cases an Experimental RFC exists in
the repository and newcomers might easily be misled into thinking that
it would be helpful to conduct more research into an abandoned
experiment.

In view of this, the original proponents of experiments (that is, 
authors of Experimental RFCs, and Working Groups that requested the
publication of Experimental RFCs) are strongly encouraged to document
the termination of experiments that do not result in subsequent
Standards Track work by publishing an Informational RFC that:

- very briefly describes the results of the experiment

- obsoletes the Experimental RFC

- if appropriate, deprecate any IANA code points allocated for the 
  experiment

- may request that the Experimental RFC is moved to Historic status.

If there is no energy in the community for the producing such an
Informational RFC, if the authors have moved on to other things, or if
the Working Group has been closed down, Area Directors should author or
seek volunteers to author such an Informational RFC.

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:45:36 -0500

> Perhaps some of this is relevant to what we're doing in the experiment document.  Timely...

I was just chatting with one of the chairs about this. I think the short 
answer is: It's not particularly relevant. The proposed IESG Statement 
is about how to deal with new Experimental docs that are about to be 
published (to make sure that someone starts thinking about how the 
experiment will conclude in the future) and old Experimental documents 
that have nobody working on them anymore (to make sure that we can get 
rid of the cruft at some point). SPFBIS, of course, is going above and 
beyond what the Statement anticipates by having a WG that is chartered 
to explicitly conclude an experiment and write a new standards track 
document. We're doing much more (and are in fact chartered to do much 
more) than is anticipated by the statement.

Interesting, but no changes to our way of moving forward.

pr

> Subject:
> Proposed IESG Statement on the Conclusion of Experiments
> From:
> To:
> "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
>
> To:
> "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
> CC:
> "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
>
>
> All,
>
> _______________________________________________
> spfbis mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/spfbis
>    

-- 
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102