File formats:

Status:

BEST CURRENT PRACTICE

Updates:

RFC 3967

Authors:

J. Klensin
S. Hartman

Stream:

IETF

Source:

NON WORKING GROUP

Cite this RFC: TXT  |  XML  |   BibTeX

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC4897

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Abstract

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Request for Comments (RFC) Editor have a long-standing rule that a document at a given maturity level cannot be published until all of the documents that it references as normative are at that maturity level or higher. This rule has sometimes resulted in very long publication delays for documents and some claims that it was a major obstruction to advancing documents in maturity level. The IETF agreed on a way to bypass this rule with RFC 3967. This document describes a simpler procedure for downward references to Standards-Track and Best Current Practice (BCP) documents, namely "note and move on". The procedure in RFC 3967 still applies for downward references to other classes of documents. In both cases, annotations should be added to such References. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.

For the definition of Status, see RFC 2026.

For the definition of Stream, see RFC 8729.