On 27-Aug-25 03:17, Barry Leiba wrote:
You're not noticing that the OLD text also talks only about IETF
documents by saying "many standards track documents". The NEW text is
intentionally broader, including all IETF documents -- Informational
and Experimental as well. That's because we've realized over time
that it's useful to include BCP 14 key words in those also, not just
in standards.
Yes. Personally I would always think carefully about whether to use
them apart from the standards track, and they have sometimes been
confusing when used in documents that are not protocol definitions,
but there's no value in attempting to prohibit them.
It was not intentional to say that *only* IETF documents use these.
But we're only writing, here, about and for the IETF, and BCP 14 only
explicitly applies to the IETF.
Again, yes. If they prove useful for a non-IETF RFC, that's fine.
As far as non-RFC documents go, I don't know about RFC 8174, but
RFC 2119 has been cited by hundreds, if not thousands, of other
documents. (Random example: "Openid provider authentication
policy extension 1.0" from 2008.) I don't know how many of them
really use "SHOULD" or "RECOMMENDED" correctly.
Brian
Barry
On Mon, Aug 25, 2025 at 4:44 PM Nico Williams <nico@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I guess I've been hiding under a rock or something and missed RFC 8174.
I was... surprised to see that the NEW text specifically refers to "many
IETF documents" considering that many non-IETF documents also make use
of BCP 14 terminology.
Of course anyone making use of BCP 14 outside IETF documents can just
either not mind or elide the IETF specificity, so maybe "who cares".
But I find this change surprising, and odd.
Nico
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