🚀 go-pugleaf

Scott Anguish -

     The term `Proposed Standard' is a technical term used in the
Internet Engineering Task Force to refer to a document that has
already been discussed, debugged, implemented, and voted upon by a
working group and made available for general comment by the IETF as a
whole.

     After a period of a few months in which all objections have
either been addressed or rejected, it is advanced to a Proposed
Standard.  After a further period, it is advanced to Draft Standard,
and finally to Standard.

     That is, nothing becomes a Proposed Standard until it has already
been accepted by the relevant standards body.  `Standard' in this
sense means `immutable, cast in stone, no more changes allowed ever'
as opposed to `something generally accepted as the right thing to do'
or `something widely implemented and used.'  For example, few people
would consider nntp (Net News Transfer Protocol) to be `non-standard,'
but officially under IETF rules it is an Experimental Protocol.

     Under this definition, NewsGrazer is not a Standard.  It has
never been through any review or discussion.  It has not even been in
existance long enough to become a Proposed Standard under IETF rules.
NewsGrazer is not even an Experimental Protocol, because no formal
document of its format has ever been submitted by NeXT for public
inspection.  Nor has there been any public review.

     The reason for this long procedure is to prevent proprietary
protocols which favor a single vendor from becoming `standards'.
Public review prevents this from happening.  If you think such
`standards' might be a good thing, then you should see some of the
`standards' which were narrowly averted, such as the `standard' for
how you log into a computer that Prime tried to inflict upon the US
back in the 1970's.