7. EXTERNAL STANDARDS AND SPECIFICATIONS
- EXTERNAL STANDARDS AND SPECIFICATIONS
Many standards groups other than the IETF create and publish standards documents for network protocols and services. When these external specifications play an important role in the Internet, it is desirable to reach common agreements on their usage -- i.e., to establish Internet Standards relating to these external specifications.
There are two categories of external specifications:
(1) Open Standards
Various national and international standards bodies, such as ANSI, ISO, IEEE, and ITU-T, develop a variety of protocol and service specifications that are similar to Technical Specifications defined here. National and international groups also publish
"implementors' agreements" that are analogous to Applicability Statements, capturing a body of implementation-specific detail concerned with the practical application of their standards. All of these are considered to be "open external standards" for the purposes of the Internet Standards Process.
(2) Other Specifications
Other proprietary specifications that have come to be widely used in the Internet may be treated by the Internet community as if they were a "standards". Such a specification is not generally developed in an open fashion, is typically proprietary, and is controlled by the vendor, vendors, or organization that produced it.
7.1 Use of External Specifications
To avoid conflict between competing versions of a specification, the Internet community will not standardize a specification that is simply an "Internet version" of an existing external specification unless an explicit cooperative arrangement to do so has been made. However, there are several ways in which an external specification that is important for the operation and/or evolution of the Internet may be adopted for Internet use.
7.1.1 Incorporation of an Open Standard
An Internet Standard TS or AS may incorporate an open external standard by reference. For example, many Internet Standards incorporate by reference the ANSI standard character set "ASCII" [2]. Whenever possible, the referenced specification shall be available online.
7.1.2 Incorporation of Other Specifications
Other proprietary specifications may be incorporated by reference to a version of the specification as long as the proprietor meets the requirements of section 10. If the other proprietary specification is not widely and readily available, the IESG may request that it be published as an Informational RFC.
The IESG generally should not favor a particular proprietary specification over technically equivalent and competing specification(s) by making any incorporated vendor specification "required" or "recommended".
7.1.3 Assumption
An IETF Working Group may start from an external specification and develop it into an Internet specification. This is acceptable if (1) the specification is provided to the Working Group in compliance with the requirements of section 10, and (2) change control has been conveyed to IETF by the original developer of the specification for the specification or for specifications derived from the original specification.