Subject: Re: Non-standard language justification (was Re: #1008 USEFOR 1.5 References: Final text on "followup")

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 10:39:36 -0700 (PDT)

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Version numbers are cheap (outside of the IETF pre-meeting blackouts), so 
>we might as well just ship official versions (my opinion). I hope we have 
>enough issues settled to make it worthwhile to ask our editor to emit 
>usefor-05 before the Paris blackout.

You do not understand. The issue is not "emitting" version numbers. The
issue is that drafts that the editors send to IETF as our work product do 
NOT show up on the IETF-USEFOR website as the current draft. People who 
join this discussion today are going to go to the IETF-USEFOR website to 
look for the "latest complete draft", and they will find USEFOR-03. 

And after they've taken the time to read and digest that document, if they
comment on anything it says, they will be told that "that's not the
current document" and that they ought to "keep up" with the discussion. 

This is a historical problem on this list. We'd get a "current version" on
the website, we'd go through a month or three of discussion where the
editor would announce "I've changed the text to say X", and then perhaps
"I've changed the text to say Y" (referring to the same text), or even
just "I've made some minor editorial changes", and then someone who hasn't
read every article and marked up his own local copy of the "current draft"
would comment on that text and be chastised for not "keeping up". This
problem was insolvable because the editor keeps the text in "several
files" and it would require updating the website at five minute intervals
(or so we were told.) Once a day was simply out of the question.

And now we cannot update the website within three weeks of a draft (which 
we never got to see prior to it being sent off, by the way) being sent to 
the IETF as our official latest draft.

THAT'S the problem. Emitting USEFOR-05 prior to France isn't the problem.
Except, of course, that nobody here will have seen it before it goes, 
other than the editor, so there is still a problem.

---

From: Henry Spencer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 14:01:32 -0400 (EDT)

> other than the editor, so there is still a problem.

No, that part isn't a problem.  There is no reason to have a pre-draft
review:  the purpose of drafts is to make documents available for review!

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       [email-masked]

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:53:42 +0200

--On 23. juni 2005 10:39 -0700 John Stanley <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> Version numbers are cheap (outside of the IETF pre-meeting blackouts),
>> so  we might as well just ship official versions (my opinion). I hope we
>> have  enough issues settled to make it worthwhile to ask our editor to
>> emit  usefor-05 before the Paris blackout.
>

That's another problem, and I'm trying to get that fixed (I got the 
password for the website yesterday).

My point is that I don't see a benefit from having two publication 
processes for WG drafts ("unofficial" and "official" drafts) when we have 
one process that works reasonably well, and is visible to the whole IETF 
community.

                        Harald

             Harald