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

[Craig Partridge]

I was involved in creating the 6 month expire rule was created, but I don't
remember any of the details.  I know that the expiration was created to
encourage working groups to make progress (by making IDs ephemeral, you had
to either move forward, or have the ID die and, potentially, the WG terminate).
As to why 6 months, I don't know.

Craig

In message <3B81D952.AD0C6DD2 at vlsm.org>, "Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim" writes:

>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
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