Subject: Re: RFC 3156, status of RFC 2015

From: "John W. Noerenberg II" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 09:48:24 -0700

At 11:40 AM +0200 10/23/03, Alfred =?hp-roman8?B?SM5uZXM=?= wrote:
>studying the [Open]PGP RFCs, I found a distracting situation
>concerning the status of these RFCs:

Regarding 3156 and 2015, marking 2015 as Historic and obsoleted by 
3156, and similarly, marking 3156 as obsoleting 2015 is a reasonable 
action.  To be honest, I don't know if the IESG is required to 
recommend this action or if the RFC Editor can make this change at 
the WG's request (which I've made on behalf of the WG).

In the past, Proposed RFCs that have been superceded by later RFCs 
linger as Proposed indefinitely instead of becoming Historic.  For 
the sake of clarity your suggestion of marking 2015 as Historic is a 
good one, which is why I've requested the change.  However, the 
common culture in the IETF is that a Proposed RFC which is obsolete 
is no longer relevant, so it's status on standards track is 
relatively harmless.

2440 does pay homage to 1991 in its text, but because 1991 is an 
Informational RFC and was never standards track, there's nothing for 
2440 to obsolete.

-- 

john noerenberg
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
   -- Lao Tzu (c. 570-490 B.C.)
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: "John W. Noerenberg II" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 09:46:15 -0700

>From: Alfred =?hp-roman8?B?SM5uZXM=?= <[email-masked]>
>Subject: RFC 3156, status of RFC 2015
>To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
>Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 11:40:03 +0200 (MESZ)
>Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked],
>         [email-masked]
>X-Mailer: ELM [$Revision: 1.17.214.3 $]
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>
>RFC 3156 is a complete re-write and update of RFC 2015, hence it
>effectively "obsoletes" RFC 2015.  But, unfortunately, the header
>of RFC 2015 states: "Updates: 2015", and not: "Obsoletes: 2015".
>Consequentially, the RFC index, "rfc-index.txt", currently contains
>the tags
>   (UPDATED BY 3156)    for RFC 2015, and
>   (UPDATES 2015)       for RFC 3156,
>which effectively should be
>   (OBSOLETED BY 3156)  for RFC 2015, and
>   (OBSOLETES 2015)     for RFC 3156 .
>
>Moreover, RFC 2015 effectively makes *normative* reference to
>RFC 1991, an INFORMATIONAL RFC. Therefore it should never have
>been placed onto the RFC Standards Track and classified as a
>PROPOSED STANDARD.
>
>RFC 1991 in turn actually has been obsoleted by RFC 2440 - another
>fact which (unfortunately) was not stated in the header of RFC 2440.
>
>Obviously, the current proposed OpenPGP standard is specified
>in RFC 2440 (Message formats) and RFC 3156 (application of MIME),
>which both are PROPOSED STANDARDs.
>
>Therefore, RFC 2015 should now be removed from the standards
>track and the PROPOSED STANDARDS section of "rfcxx00.txt" .
>
>
>Please perform the necessary actions to resolve this situation.
>
>Best regards,
>   Alfred H‘nes.
>
>--
>
>+------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
>| TR-Sys Alfred Hoenes   |  Alfred Hoenes   Dipl.-Math., Dipl.-Phys.  |
>| Gerlinger Strasse 12   |  Phone: (+49)7156/9635-0, Fax: -18         |
>| D-71254  Ditzingen     |  E-Mail:  [email-masked]                     |
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