Fw: [ntpwg] [Editorial Errata Reported] RFC7822 (4848)

[Daniel Franke]

On 11/1/16, Eric S. Raymond <esr at thyrsus.com> wrote:
> Gary E. Miller <gem at rellim.com>:
>> Yo All!
>>
>> More tea leaves to read from ntpwg...
>
> I'm getting a there's-drama-going-on-we-can't-see vibe from this.

Note that Harlan rescinded this erratum the day after he reported it.
No explanation was given. The erratum was illogical considering that
no endorsement was implied in the first place. Author affiliations on
RFCs are just that -- affiliations -- and nothing more. As a standards
track document which cleared the IESG, RFC 7822 is the position *of
the IETF*, and not necessarily that of the authors' institutions or
even that of the authors. It ceased to be Danny and Tal's document as
soon as the NTP WG adopted it. Anyway, that would be my reasoning for
rejecting the erratum but I have no idea if it was Harlan's reasoning
for rescinding it.

Anyway, I don't think there's any hidden interpersonal drama here,
just strong technical disagreement. We discussed
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-stenn-ntp-extension-fields-00, which
is Harlan's proposed replacement for RFC 7822, at Tuesday's session. I
can't make head or tail of that document, and although I kept silent
during that segment of the discussion others panned it pretty hard.
When Harlan was asked to describe how the document differed from RFC
7822 and what substantive changes he was proposing, he couldn't
answer. Also note that although three authors are listed, it seems to
be entirely Harlan's work; listing Danny and Tal seems to be
aspirational. Tal was the document's loudest critic during the WG
session.

So, given the kind of reception it got, I don't think this document is
going anywhere, and RFC 7822 is still the law of the land.