RE: An Internet Draft as reference material

[Christian Huitema]

> Since Internet Drafts are designed and announced to vanish after
> 6 months (they even carry their own expiration date!), referencing one
> in a book seems to be tacityly admitting that the book will be
> worthless after 6 months.  Which, one suspects, is probably true
> for most books that reference Internet Drafts.
> 
> Bob Braden
> 

Well, when you write a book chapter, you can either describe only what is
available in "archived publications" or describe what you believe is the
state of the art. The former is available in RFC and academic journals,
which generally were written 2 years ago; the latter  often correspond to
internet drafts. At this point, it really is up to the author, who should
indeed use the appropriate tenses, etc.

Note that in one specific case, CIDR/BGP-4, the technology moved to the real
world before it was ever published as an RFC. What is an author to do in
such cases?

-- Christian Huitema