[tap-l] RFC for tap protocol

[Michael G Schwern]

Salve J Nilsen wrote:
> Schwern and I had a few words with Harald T. Alvestrand (former chairman 
> of IETF) about the relevance of putting TAP on a IETF track, and he 
> basically answered "Sure, this sounds like something the application group 
> would want to work on."

When Salve suggested this I burst out laughing because "standards" and "Perl" 
are like oil and water.  In Oslo we were joking about "ISO TAP", how none of 
us would have been let in the room and the resulting horror that would come 
out the other end.

After I had my laugh, I let Harald set me straight on how the IETF works.  The 
main points I recall are...

* The working group is basically an existing mailing list, this one would do.
* The IETF doesn't poke their fingers into our business.
* Even if we don't go for a full standard, we can still publish as a draft or
   RFC.
* Even though TAP isn't technically an "Internet" protocol it's still within
   their scope.

If nothing else, it would give us some structure to the process of specifying 
TAP and some legitimacy to the format by publishing with the IETF.  It would 
allow TAP to be seen by a wider community.

And hey, haven't you always wanted to publish an RFC?

So I think this is worth pursuing.  The RFCs about publishing make my eyes 
glaze over, but hopefully somebody else will plow through them.


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