[ih] Internet Draft: when and why exactly 6 months?

[Ivan.Arias-Rodriguez at nokia.com]

	Just in case you would like to access almost any old internet draft
written within the last 10 years or so, go to http://www.watersprings.org,
it is really an amazing webpage... They have more than 18200 documents all
together (about 15000 drafts and 3000 RFCs)...

	Unfortunately, I didn't find the early drafts of 1310... :-( But you
can find there even the previous releases of RFC 1264 (October 1991) and the
drafts that finished being lots of the RFCs in the 13XX-14XX range... Of
course, the newer the RFC is, the more possibilities of finding there the
drafts you have... Well, I have just checked that previous draft of RFC 1264
and it contains only the mail sent to tell about the existence of a new
RFC... :-/

	Maybe the one in charge of the webpage could put a link to this
page... if you don't have it yet... Of course, the URL wouldn't last
forever... ;-)

	BR Iván Arias Rodríguez

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim [mailto:rms46 at vlsm.org]
> Sent: 21. August 2001 6:45
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Subject: [ih] Internet Draft: when and why exactly 6 months?
> 
> 
> I wrote before:
> > But, I still have no idea on since when and why exactly
> > there exists "a 6 months expire limit" for Internet Drafts.
> 
> Well, I still have no idea on "when" and "why" EXACTLY
> there exist a six month expire limit. The earliest 
> artifact that I could find is RFC-1310 section 2.4 
> (March 1992):
>   "An Internet Draft that is published as an RFC is removed 
>    from the Internet Draft directory.  A document that has 
>    remained unchanged in the Internet Drafts directory for 
>    more than six months without being recommended by the 
>    IESG for publication as an RFC is simply removed from 
>    the Internet Draft directory.  At any time, an Internet 
>    Draft may be replace by a more recent version of the same
>    specification, restarting the six-month timeout period."
> However, it does not say anything about when and why
> 6 months. Why not 5 or 9 months (ca. 1 or 2 IETF meeting 
> intervals)?
> 
> BTW, 
> * I consider anything before mid 1990s (when .com < .others)
>   as internet pre-history.
> * There are some (many?) "recycled expired I-Ds" that become 
>   RFC after reincarnation. Example: BCP-1.
> 
> regards,
> 
> -- 
> Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim - VLSM-TJT - http://rms46.vlsm.org
> - GET /default.ida?ZCZCNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN%u9090
>