On individual submissions for standards-track RFCs

[Paul Hoffman <phoffman@xxxxxxx>]

At 8:21 AM -0700 9/26/05, James M Snell wrote:
> Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on a number of 
> proposed Atom extensions that I am moving forward with as 
> standards-track RFC's through individual submission.

Thank you for asking for these unofficial last calls. This is a very 
good way to work the process.

For the WG's benefit: The IETF is quite open to 
individually-submitted standards-track RFCs, particularly if they 
have been discussed in the open among those interested in the field. 
When James takes his Internet Drafts to the relevant IETF Area 
Director (that is, Scott Hollenbeck), James can point to the 
discussion threads on the mailing list, and Scott can use that to 
guage whether there has been enough discussion before taking the 
proposals to IETF-wide last call.

Note that there is always an IETF-wide last call on standards-track 
documents such as this. Those are initiated by the relevant Area 
Director. At their conclusion, the AD decides what to do, and 
normally then takes the drafts plus a summary of the discussion to 
the IESG.

One sad side-effect of this process is that, after the IESG approves 
the document to become a standards-track document, it will languish 
in the RFC Editor's queue for a very long time. Because the current 
RFC Editor has such a long backup, they normally tend to put 
WG-sponsored documents higher in the queue than 
individually-sponsored documents. Fortunately for us, we don't have 
to call the new standard by its RFC number, but instead by its 
extension name.

Having said all that, please review any extension documents carefully 
and post your responses to the mailing list. This helps both the 
author and the IETF decide whether to make them standards.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium