Your setting Return-Path to YOU in your cygwin@cygwin postings

[Owen Rees]

--On Wednesday, March 04, 2009 16:39:41 +0000 Dave Korn wrote:

>   Yes, you're right.  Looking at the history, it's never made it to the
> status of an STD, but there was an IETF draft proposal (which is actually
> one stage more advanced than an RFC):
>
> http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98dec/I-D/draft-ietf-drums-mail-followup-
> to-00.txt
>

To quote RFC2026:

2.2  Internet-Drafts

   During the development of a specification, draft versions of the
   document are made available for informal review and comment by
   placing them in the IETF's "Internet-Drafts" directory, which is
   replicated on a number of Internet hosts.  This makes an evolving
   working document readily available to a wide audience, facilitating
   the process of review and revision.

   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.  At any time, an
   Internet-Draft may be replaced by a more recent version of the same
   specification, restarting the six-month timeout period.

   An Internet-Draft is NOT a means of "publishing" a specification;
   specifications are published through the RFC mechanism described in
   the previous section.  Internet-Drafts have no formal status, and are
   subject to change or removal at any time.

      ********************************************************
      *                                                      *
      *   Under no circumstances should an Internet-Draft    *
      *   be referenced by any paper, report, or Request-    *
      *   for-Proposal, nor should a vendor claim compliance *
      *   with an Internet-Draft.                            *
      *                                                      *
      ********************************************************


That, and the rest of RFC2026 makes it clear that a "internet draft" has 
lower status than an RFC - it is typically a proposal that may eventually 
turn into an RFC. On the subject of expiry:

draft-ietf-drums-mail-followup-to-00.txt
Expires: May 1998

It has not been followed up for over 10 years so I think that indicates the 
status of the proposal as far as the IETF process is concerned.

-- 
Owen Rees; speaking personally, and not on behalf of HP.
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