Reducing the Standards Track to Two Maturity Levels draft-housley-two-maturity-levels-01.txt

Outline Introduction Two Maturity Levels –Proposed Standard –Internet Standard Timing Requirements Downward References Permitted STD Numbers Transition Open Discussion

Introduction Maturity level advancement is too hard IESG observations: –Since advancement is rare, initial publication receives much more scrutiny than is called for by RFC 2026 –Implementation reports lead to removing the complexity associated with features that are not used in practice Goal: an environment where "good enough" documents are published as soon as rough consensus is achieved Goal: easier to publish subsequent revisions Goal: advancement in maturity level based on interoperability

Two Maturity Levels Proposed Standard –Exactly as specified in RFC 2026 Internet Standard –Similar to Draft Standard as specified in RFC 2026 –Documentation of interoperability testing Guidance in RFC 5657

Timing Requirements The requirement for six months between "Proposed Standard" and "Internet Standard" is removed May go straight to Internet Standard if the initial request includes interoperability documentation No review cycle is imposed on standards track documents at any maturity level

Downward References Permitted Internet Standards may normatively reference Proposed Standards –Allows an Internet Standard to freely reference features in any standards track RFC No change in rules for references to Informational RFCs Downward references to Internet-Draft documents continue to be prohibited

STD Numbers The STD numbering system is abandoned

Transition On the day these changes are published as a BCP all existing Draft Standard and Standard documents automatically get reclassified as Internet Standard documents –Corresponding changes would be made to the RFC Index and other features of the RFC Editor web site –The STD index will be marked historic

Open Discussion