[ih] Simple question

[Joe Touch]

Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim wrote:

...
> 
> Whoops, this is not related to Internet History :-).
> But, I still have no idea on since when and why exactly
> there exists "a 6 months expire limit" for Internet Drafts.
> Perhaps it is related with the disk capacities in
> the 1980s?


The decision to make them expire was not related to storage limits. It 
was (and is) a conscious decision to encourage the open exchange of 
half-baked ideas, without having them haunt their author ad nauseum.

If they were to persist, the thought goes, they'd only be published in 
near-final form. The goal of the IDs is to encourage the evolution of 
ideas, which happens before that.

Joe