[ih] Cluster Addressing and CIDR

[Mike Padlipsky]

what i take to be a false, or at best misleading, premise ['So, IDs could 
be as valuable as RFCs.'] and the non-sequitur drawn from it ['Then, why 
imposing a 6 month limit for IDs, when diskspace is so cheap?'] has 
generated an awful lot of fuss.

as a semi-outsider these days [well, make that years: i had to ask joe 
off-list whether 'id's' had been term-limited from the outset, since i'd 
given up writing rfc's by '89 and wasn't paying any particular attention to 
the to-me by-then rather byzantine process involved], perhaps i can offer a 
somewhat useful perspective:

joe's underlying objection seems to me to be that the rules should not be 
changed _retroactively_.  when extant id's were written, they were by 
definition meant to be 'ephemeral', hence coming along and somehow 
declaring them not to have been well after the fact does feel rather like 
the sort of trick the u.s. congress often plays, but at some level 
shouldn't, ex-post-facto-wise.

ted's to-me well-meant mechanization of an approval process to ameliorate 
the situation seems to me to be somewhere near the right track but does 
have a couple of flaws: in the first place, most of the 'id's' to be placed 
in his proposed more-or-less official archive have already expired [many by 
10 yrs or more], so at some level really shldn't be archived pending author 
approval/disapproval under the new disposition.  perhaps he meant 'from now 
on', tho; in wh/ case, in the second place, the procedure he suggests might 
well be in the true current spirit of the rfc process but does feel awfully 
byzantine to me.

granted, that might just make me a swine, before whom perls shldn't be 
dropped, but how about a simpler approach?  update whatever rfc [or other 
series] document it was that established the 6-month lifetime for 'id's', 
or write a new one if necessary, and, explicitly in light of the _possible_ 
'historical' value of making the information available for more than 6 
months, add a provision that when submitted, 'id's' may be declared by 
their authors to be archivable after 'expiration', iff [sic] the authors 
choose to make such declaration.  thus, those who wld be put off by the 
threat of casting their hipshots in concrete wldn't have to worry, and 
those who aren't put off [wld it be too cruel to say those who believe 
their every byte is a pearl, because it's theirs?  probably.  i suppose.] 
can play the new game.

after all, think of how much fun you can have with that -- in/on, i hope 
and trust, some far more appropriate e-venue than 'internet-history' -- 
including but not limited to debating the exact phrasing of the waiver, and 
whether it should only apply to some t/b/d official archive or to 
personally held copies or to both....

[in light of the half-dozen add'l msgs that came in while i was drafting 
this, better make that  IN/ON, I HOPE AND TRUST, SOME FAR MORE APPROPRIATE 
E-VENUE THAN 'INTERNET-HISTORY'.]


cheers, map

[whose shoulder problems caused him to break down some time ago and create
a 'signature' file to apologize for the lack of his formerly customary
e-volubility -- and who's been employing shiftless typing for a long time
now to spare his wristsnfingers, in case you didn't know ... and who's
further broken down and done http://www.lafn.org/~ba213/mapstuff.html ,
rather grudgingly]