[ih] theory and practice of RFCs?

[Dave Crocker]

On 12/15/2012 12:52 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Which brings me back to the other question I posed: "If one wanted to
> pose an idea for a new protocol, and solicit feedback, how would you do
> it today?"
>
> This is motivated by wanting to distribute a white paper about some of
> my current work, for review and comment.  My initial thought was to
> publish a draft RFC - but the process and audience are not what they
> once were, and recent RFCs seem much more standards like (as others have
> commented).


Along the lines of some of the other responses:

      Be clear and direct about your goals in circulating the proposal. 
  In general, the broader the audience, the more specific should be the 
detail in the proposal, which is to say it should be more mature, in my 
view.

      On the average, it seems to be best to take employ a 'spiral' 
model for garnering feedback and support.  That is, start small and 
direct, moving incrementally to larger and more diverse audiences. Make 
sure there is a method for group discussion.

In terms of documents and circulation methods, this tends to mean 
privately circulating the document to some people you know or otherwise 
expect to have relevant expertise, motivation to evaluate the proposal, 
and a reasonable likelihood of being supportive.

A web page entry has the benefit of being easily available, but not 
broadly circulated.  That is, it is not pushed to a wide audience 
automatically.  You can send pointers, while still permitting others to 
find it by happenstance.

An Internet-Draft is an extremely public document.  While it's extremely 
easy to get a document circulated this way, be sure you really are ready 
for that broad an audience.  The RFC mechanism is now a very heavyweight 
approach.  The Independent Stream does continue to make the mechanism 
broadly available, but I suggest waiting until your proposal is 
reasonably mature before pursuing RFC publication.

d/
-- 
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net