[ih] Why the six month draft expiration ?

[John Levine]

Over in the IETF we're having a robust debate about changing the way
Internet Drafts do or do not expire, and in particular whether to let
them stay active (for some definition of active) for more than six
months.

RFC 2026 says this:

   An Internet-Draft that is published as an RFC, or 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-Drafts directory. ...

Does anyone remember where the six months came from?  Was it some principle
to keep things moving along, or maybe just if we keep them for more than
six months we'll have to get a bigger disk?

READING COMPREHENSION TEST: We already have plenty of guesses, so we
don't need any more. I'm asking if anyone was there at the time and
remembers the actual reason.

R's,
John