Re: Further discussion about IANA Considerations for MIBs

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Randy Presuhn wrote:
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-07.txt
> says that the IANA considerations section is optional.  Will this be updated?
> I worry that the chasm between 2223bis and reality is becoming large.
> (Witness recent discussions on wgchairs list about IPR-related boilerplate).

Maybe I read it wrong, but my understanding is that 2223bis requires
an IANA Considerations section only when a new namespace is defined,
in accord with RFC 2434.

As I understand it, this does not not necessarily conflict with the 
stuff in ID-nits and its successor ID-Checklist, because those
documents specify requirements for Internet-Drafts, and not all
of those requirements apply to published RFCs.  In particular,
ID-Checklist Section 2.2 bullet 7B says this about the now-mandatory
IANA Considerations section:

  Must specify if the document requires IANA to assign or update
  values in an IANA registry before RFC publication. 

This obviously applies to Internet-Drafts, not to the RFCs that they
become.  Recent practice has been to retain such stuff after
changing language such as "the IANA is requested to assign a value
for ___"  to "the IANA has assigned the value ___ for ___".
Personally, I don't think this adds much, but I also don't see a
reason why it has to be mandatory.

I do agree that 2223bis needs to be re-spun to accomodate the new
copyright notices and IPR notices in RFCs (in fact my understanding
is that it has been on hold since last August for precisely this
reason).

//cmh