Anne van Kesteren

386: Internet Drafts are not Open Standards

John Gruber claims HTTP Live Streaming is an open standard because there is an internet draft hosted at the IETF. With help a dog could submit an internet draft to the IETF. There is no Working Group around this item and its intended status is “Informational” which is far away from “Standards Track.” After some amount of drafts one might reach RFC (with the intended status). However, technically not even RFC status qualifies as standard. While there are over five thousand RFCs, IETF currently has only seventy STD documents. And internet drafts intended to be “Informational” will of course never get there.