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rfc:bcp:bcp205

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Y. Sheffer Request for Comments: 7942 Intuit BCP: 205 A. Farrel Obsoletes: 6982 Juniper Networks Category: Best Current Practice July 2016 ISSN: 2070-1721

Improving Awareness of Running Code: The Implementation Status Section

Abstract

 This document describes a simple process that allows authors of
 Internet-Drafts to record the status of known implementations by
 including an Implementation Status section.  This will allow
 reviewers and working groups to assign due consideration to documents
 that have the benefit of running code, which may serve as evidence of
 valuable experimentation and feedback that have made the implemented
 protocols more mature.
 This process is not mandatory.  Authors of Internet-Drafts are
 encouraged to consider using the process for their documents, and
 working groups are invited to think about applying the process to all
 of their protocol specifications.  This document obsoletes RFC 6982,
 advancing it to a Best Current Practice.

Status of This Memo

 This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice.
 This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
 (IETF).  It has been approved for publication by the Internet
 Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on BCPs is
 available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
 Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
 and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
 http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7942.

Sheffer & Farrel Best Current Practice [Page 1] RFC 7942 Running Code July 2016

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
 document authors.  All rights reserved.
 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
 publication of this document.  Please review these documents
 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
 to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
 include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
 described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

 1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
 2.  The "Implementation Status" Section . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   2.1.  Introductory Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
 3.  Alternative Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
 4.  Benefits  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
 5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
 6.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
 Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
 Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1. Introduction

 Most IETF participants are familiar with the saying "rough consensus
 and running code" [Tao] and can identify with its pragmatic approach.
 However, implementation is not a requirement for publication as an
 RFC.  There are many examples of Internet-Drafts containing protocol
 specifications that have gone through to publication as Proposed
 Standard RFCs without implementation.  Some of them may never get
 implemented.
 Over time, a variety of policies have been applied within the IETF to
 consider running code.  In the Routing Area, it used to be a
 requirement that one or more implementations must exist before an
 Internet-Draft could be published as a Proposed Standard RFC
 [RFC1264].  That RFC was later obsoleted and the requirement for
 implementation was lifted, but each working group was given the
 authority to impose its own implementation requirements [RFC4794] and
 at least one working group, Inter-Domain Routing (IDR), continues to
 require two independent implementations.

Sheffer & Farrel Best Current Practice [Page 2] RFC 7942 Running Code July 2016

 The hypothesis behind the current document is that there are benefits
 to the IETF standardization process of producing implementations of
 protocol specifications before publication as RFCs.  These benefits,
 which include determining that the specification is comprehensible
 and that there is sufficient interest to implement, are further
 discussed in Section 4.
 This document describes a simple mechanism that allows authors of
 Internet-Drafts to record and publicize the status of known
 implementations by including an Implementation Status section.  The
 document defines (quite informally) the contents of this section to
 ensure that the relevant information is included.  This will allow
 reviewers and working groups to assign due consideration to documents
 that have the benefit of running code, which may serve as evidence of
 valuable experimentation and feedback that have made the implemented
 protocols more mature.
 It is up to the individual working groups to use this information as
 they see fit, but one result might be the preferential treatment of
 documents, resulting in them being processed more rapidly.  We
 recommend that the Implementation Status section should be removed
 from Internet-Drafts before they are published as RFCs.  As a result,
 we do not envisage changes to this section after approval of the
 document for publication, e.g., the RFC errata process does not
 apply.
 This process is not mandatory.  Authors of Internet-Drafts are
 encouraged to consider using the process for their documents, and
 working groups are invited to think about applying the process to all
 of their protocol specifications.
 The scope of this process is all Internet-Drafts (I-Ds) that contain
 implementable specifications, whether produced within IETF working
 groups or outside working groups but intended for IETF consensus.
 I-Ds published on the Independent Stream are explicitly out of scope.
 It is expected that the greatest benefit will be seen with Standards
 Track documents developed within working groups.
 This process was initially proposed as an experiment in [RFC6982].
 That document is now obsoleted, and the process advanced to Best
 Current Practice.
 Historically, there have been other ways for experience based on
 protocol implementations to feed back into the IETF process.  Many
 "implementation reports" have been published, in some cases several
 years after the protocol was originally published.  Providing

Sheffer & Farrel Best Current Practice [Page 3] RFC 7942 Running Code July 2016

 feedback to published protocols is a related goal, but different from
 the current document's focus.  Two notable examples of published
 implementation reports are [RFC1369] and [RFC5080].

2. The "Implementation Status" Section

 Each Internet-Draft may contain a section entitled "Implementation
 Status".  This section, if it appears, should be located just before
 the "Security Considerations" section and contain, for each existing
 implementation, some or all of the following:
  1. The organization responsible for the implementation, if any.
  1. The implementation's name and/or a link to a web page where the

implementation or a description of it can be found.

  1. A brief general description.
  1. The implementation's level of maturity: research, prototype,

alpha, beta, production, widely used, etc.

  1. Coverage: which parts of the protocol specification are

implemented.

  1. Version compatibility: what version/versions of the Internet-Draft

are known to be implemented.

  1. Licensing: the terms under which the implementation can be used.

For example: proprietary, royalty licensing, freely distributable

    with acknowledgement (BSD style), freely distributable with
    requirement to redistribute source (General Public License (GPL)
    style), and other (specify).
  1. Implementation experience: any useful information the implementers

want to share with the community.

  1. Contact information: ideally a person's name and email address,

but possibly just a URL or mailing list.

  1. The date when information about this particular implementation was

last updated.

 In addition, this section can contain information about the
 interoperability of any or all of the implementations, including
 references to test-case descriptions and interoperability reports,
 when such exist.

Sheffer & Farrel Best Current Practice [Page 4] RFC 7942 Running Code July 2016

 Working group chairs and area directors (ADs) are requested to ensure
 that this section is not used as a marketing venue for specific
 implementations.
 Since this information is necessarily time dependent, it is
 inappropriate for inclusion in a published RFC.  The authors should
 include a note to the RFC Editor requesting that the section be
 removed before publication.

2.1. Introductory Text

 The following boilerplate text is proposed to head the Implementation
 Status section:
   This section records the status of known implementations of the
   protocol defined by this specification at the time of posting of
   this Internet-Draft, and is based on a proposal described in
   RFC 7942.  The description of implementations in this section is
   intended to assist the IETF in its decision processes in
   progressing drafts to RFCs.  Please note that the listing of any
   individual implementation here does not imply endorsement by the
   IETF.  Furthermore, no effort has been spent to verify the
   information presented here that was supplied by IETF contributors.
   This is not intended as, and must not be construed to be, a
   catalog of available implementations or their features.  Readers
   are advised to note that other implementations may exist.
   According to RFC 7942, "this will allow reviewers and working
   groups to assign due consideration to documents that have the
   benefit of running code, which may serve as evidence of valuable
   experimentation and feedback that have made the implemented
   protocols more mature.  It is up to the individual working groups
   to use this information as they see fit".
 Authors are requested to add a note to the RFC Editor at the top of
 this section, advising the Editor to remove the entire section before
 publication, as well as the reference to RFC 7942.

3. Alternative Formats

 Sometimes it can be advantageous to publish the implementation status
 separately from the base Internet-Draft, e.g., on the IETF wiki:
  1. When the Implementation Status section becomes too large to be

conveniently managed within the document.

  1. When a working group decides to have implementors, rather than

authors, keep the status of their implementations current.

Sheffer & Farrel Best Current Practice [Page 5] RFC 7942 Running Code July 2016

  1. When a working group already maintains an active wiki and prefers

to use it for this purpose.

  1. If the working group decides that the information is still

valuable (and needs to be kept current) after the I-D is published

    as an RFC, and the Implementation Status section had been removed
    from it.
 It is highly desirable for all readers of the Internet-Draft to be
 made aware of this information.  Initially, this can be done by
 replacing the Implementation Status section's contents with a URL
 pointing to the wiki.  Later, the IETF Tools may support this
 functionality, e.g., by including such a link in the HTML file of the
 document, similar to the IPR link.
 If the implementation status is published separately from the I-D,
 then this information needs to be openly available without requiring
 authentication, registration, or access controls if it is to have any
 useful effects.

4. Benefits

 Publishing the information about implementations provides the working
 group with several benefits:
  1. Working group members, chairs, and ADs may use the information

provided to help prioritize the progress of I-Ds, e.g., when there

    are several competing proposals to solve a particular problem.
  1. Similarly, the information is useful when deciding whether the

document should be progressed on a different track (individual

    submission, Experimental, etc.).
  1. Making this information public and an explicit part of WG

deliberations will motivate participants to implement protocol

    proposals, which in turn helps in discovering protocol flaws at an
    early stage.
  1. Other participants can use the software to evaluate the usefulness

of protocol features, its correctness (to some degree), and other

    properties, such as resilience and scalability.
  1. WG members may choose to perform interoperability testing with

known implementations, especially when they are publicly

    available.

Sheffer & Farrel Best Current Practice [Page 6] RFC 7942 Running Code July 2016

  1. In the case of open source, people may want to study the code to

better understand the protocol and its limitations, determine if

    the implementation matches the protocol specification, and whether
    the protocol specification has omissions or ambiguities.
  1. And lastly, some protocol features may be hard to understand, and

for such features, the mere assurance that they can be implemented

    is beneficial.  We note though that code should never be used in
    lieu of a clear specification.
 We do not specify here whether and to what degree working groups are
 expected to prefer proposals that have "running code" associated with
 them, over others that do not.
 Working group chairs are invited to suggest this mechanism to
 document editors in their working groups, and to draw the attention
 of their working group participants to Implementation Status sections
 where they exist.

5. Security Considerations

 This is a process document; therefore, it does not have a direct
 effect on the security of any particular IETF protocol.  However,
 better-reviewed protocols are likely to also be more secure.

6. Informative References

 [RFC1264]  Hinden, R., "Internet Engineering Task Force Internet
            Routing Protocol Standardization Criteria", RFC 1264,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC1264, October 1991,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1264>.
 [RFC1369]  Kastenholz, F., "Implementation Notes and Experience for
            the Internet Ethernet MIB", RFC 1369,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC1369, October 1992,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1369>.
 [RFC4794]  Fenner, B., "RFC 1264 Is Obsolete", RFC 4794,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC4794, December 2006,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4794>.
 [RFC5080]  Nelson, D. and A. DeKok, "Common Remote Authentication
            Dial In User Service (RADIUS) Implementation Issues and
            Suggested Fixes", RFC 5080, DOI 10.17487/RFC5080, December
            2007, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5080>.

Sheffer & Farrel Best Current Practice [Page 7] RFC 7942 Running Code July 2016

 [RFC6982]  Sheffer, Y. and A. Farrel, "Improving Awareness of Running
            Code: The Implementation Status Section", RFC 6982,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC6982, July 2013,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6982>.
 [Tao]      Hoffman, P., Ed., "The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to
            the Internet Engineering Task Force", 2012,
            <http://www.ietf.org/tao.html>.

Acknowledgements

 We would like to thank Stephen Farrell, who reawakened community
 interest in this topic.  Several reviewers provided important input,
 including Loa Andersson, Dave Crocker, Ned Freed, Joel M. Halpern,
 Christer Holmberg, Denis Ovsienko, and Curtis Villamizar.
 This document was originally prepared using the lyx2rfc tool, and we
 would like to thank Nico Williams, its author.

Authors' Addresses

 Yaron Sheffer
 Intuit
 Email: yaronf.ietf@gmail.com
 Adrian Farrel
 Juniper Networks
 Email: adrian@olddog.co.uk

Sheffer & Farrel Best Current Practice [Page 8]

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