[AFS3-std] AFS3 Standardization and Independent Submissions - response from ISE

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

On Thu, 2011-04-21 at 09:05 -0500, Douglas E. Engert wrote:
> Here is the response from the ISE on our inquiry
> about our process. (Sorry I missed the April 14 note somehow.)
> 
> The way I read this is:
> 
> We need some words to indicate that these are not
> IETF Standards, but informational. (point 3 below.)

I think what Nevil is talking about is changing the whole tone of
documents so that they sound more descriptive rather than prescriptive.
That's something I'm going to push back on fairly hard; it's perfectly
appropriate to publish protocol specifications, with prescriptive
language, as informational documents.  In fact, the IETF itself does
this all the time, which it wishes to publish a spec which will not be
an Internet standard.



> We might want to consider having an AFS WG in the IETF
> (Point 4 below), but as I understand it, there are complications
> with doing this because IBM still owns the name "AFS" and has
> some restrictions on any code derived from the IBM/AFS.
> (Please correct me if I am wrong on this.)

I don't think those issues are insurmountable.  We can certainly work
around the trademark issues by renaming the protocol.  Any restrictions
on the OpenAFS code are spelled out in the IPL, and apply to code that
derives from OpenAFS.  I don't see anything there that prevents writing
of protocol documentation, and I don't see anything that prevents
development of new protocol bits.

However, we had the "should we be a working group" discussion before,
and mostly came to the conclusion that we should not.  We certainly
could revisit that discussion, but I think most of Jeff's arguments
still apply.

-- Jeff