RFC 4897: Handling Normative References to Standards-Track Documents
In plain English — editorial summary, not part of the RFC
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.
Document record
- Document ID
- RFC4897
- Published
- June 2007
- Authors
- J. Klensin; S. Hartman
- Status
- BEST CURRENT PRACTICE
- Stream
- IETF
- Area
- —
- Pages
- 6
- Also known as
- BCP97
- Updates:
- RFC 3967
Also filed under
About this page
The document record above — title, authors, date, status, stream, area, relationships, DOI and errata — is imported verbatim from the public RFC Editor index. The “in plain English” section is editorial: written by The metasystema editorial team, not part of the RFC. Where the two differ, the RFC text governs.
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