IETF Stream Documents Require IETF Rough Consensus
RFC 8789 part of BCP 9


Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) J. Halpern, Ed.
Request for Comments: 8789 Ericsson
BCP: 9 E. Rescorla, Ed.
Updates: 2026 Mozilla
Category: Best Current Practice June 2020
ISSN: 2070-1721
 IETF Stream Documents Require IETF Rough Consensus
Abstract
 This document requires that the IETF never publish any IETF Stream
 RFCs without IETF rough consensus. This updates RFC 2026.
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 represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
 received public review and 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
 https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8789.
Copyright Notice
 Copyright (c) 2020 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
 (https://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. Terminology
 3. Action
 4. Discussion
 5. IANA Considerations
 6. Security Considerations
 7. Normative References
 8. Informative References
 Authors' Addresses
1. Introduction
 IETF procedures, as defined by [RFC2026], allow for Informational or
 Experimental RFCs to be published without IETF rough consensus. For
 context, it should be remembered that this RFC predates the
 separation of the various streams (e.g., IRTF, IAB, and Independent.)
 When it was written, there were only "RFCs".
 As a consequence, the IESG was permitted to approve an Internet-Draft
 for publication as an RFC without IETF rough consensus.
2. Terminology
 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
 "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
 capitals, as shown here.
3. Action
 The IETF MUST NOT publish RFCs on the IETF Stream without
 establishing IETF rough consensus for publication.
4. Discussion
 The IETF procedures prior to publication of this BCP permitted such
 informational or experimental publication without IETF rough
 consensus. In 2007, the IESG issued a statement saying that no
 document will be issued without first conducting an IETF Last Call
 [IESG-STATE-AD]. While this apparently improved the situation, when
 looking more closely, it made it worse. Rather than publishing
 documents without verifying that there is rough consensus, as the
 wording in [RFC2026] suggests, this had the IESG explicitly
 publishing documents on the IETF Stream that have failed to achieve
 rough consensus.
 One could argue that there is a need for publishing some documents
 that the community cannot agree on. However, we have an explicit
 path for such publication, namely the Independent Stream. Or, for
 research documents, the IRTF Stream, which explicitly publishes
 minority opinion Informational RFCs.
5. IANA Considerations
 This document has no IANA actions.
6. Security Considerations
 This document introduces no new security considerations. It is a
 process document about changes to the rules for certain corner cases
 in publishing IETF Stream RFCs. However, this procedure will prevent
 publication of IETF Stream documents that have not reached rough
 consensus about their security aspects, thus potentially improving
 security aspects of IETF Stream documents.
7. Normative References
 [RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
 3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996,
 <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2026>.
 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
 DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
 <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
 [RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
 May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
8. Informative References
 [IESG-STATE-AD]
 IESG, "Guidance on Area Director Sponsoring of Documents",
 IESG Statement, March 2007,
 <https://ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/area-
 director-sponsoring-documents/>.
Authors' Addresses
 Joel Halpern (editor)
 Ericsson
 P.O. Box 6049
 Leesburg, VA 20178
 United States of America
 Email: joel.halpern@ericsson.com
 Eric Rescorla (editor)
 Mozilla
 331 E. Evelyn Ave.
 Mountain View, CA 94101
 United States of America
 Email: ekr@rtfm.com