RE: opsec and 2119 keywords

[George Jones <gmj@pobox.com>]

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 Black_David@emc.com wrote:

> > On Mon, 8 Mar 2004, George Jones wrote:
> > > From my reading of 2119, the usage of the keywords in the draft is
> > > consistent and should not introduce confusion.   If you think that's
> > > not true, let me know where....in general or in particular places
> > > in the draft.
> >
> > IMHO, there is no conflict with *RFC2119* on this.  It's fully OK to
> > use the keywords in this document, even if it were Informational.
> >
> > On the other hand, the different question is whether we WANT to do
> > that.  AFAICS, this was a reason for pushback in the meeting and in
> > some reviews.

>
>  I completely agree with Pekka's remarks
> that I've quoted above.

OK.  I was missing the SHOULD vs WANT[1] distinction.  I thought the
question was whether a) the doc used the keywords in a way consistent
with 2119 and b) if it was appropriate for an info.

I guess the question I have now is who is "we" and how do I determine
what "we" want (/me starts to feel like he should be running for
president and saying things like "that depends on what the definition
of 'is' is".)

> [ ... snip ... ]
>
> I also agree with Pekka's view on whether to use the upper case
> RFC 2119 terms:

I think I'm missing something else here WRT case.  2119 does not speak
directly to case (at least not lower case).  Is there a later or
unwritten convention that I'm missing ?

>
> > Personally, I don't have strong feelings about how this is
> handled,

Neither do I.   I agree with Fred Baker's comments from the BoF
(http://www.xmpp.org/ietf-logs/opsec@ietf.xmpp.org/2004-03-01.html):
get the ideas out (function).  Form is secondary (to me anyhow).

> > but I think that was a feeling of a couple of persons, at least, who
> > had contributed to the effort.

I'm open to constructive suggestions that are consistent with a) IETF
guidelines b) the sense of the BoF that it the draft should go out
"soon" as an info.

In the meantime, I'm going to go back to finishing off the tracker
comments.   If there's consensus for a change WRT the 2119 wording
I'll make it.

[1] Note that RFC2119 does not define the term "WANT" :-)

Thanks,
---George