[cabfpub] CAB Forum Document Versioning

[Madell, William]

If that's a motion, I'll second it.

Cheers,
Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: public-bounces at cabforum.org [mailto:public-bounces at cabforum.org] On Behalf Of Gervase Markham
Sent: 28 January 2013 10:24
To: CABFPub
Subject: [cabfpub] CAB Forum Document Versioning

Dear CAB Forum,

Mozilla would like to propose a change to the way we denote versions of
our key published documents (EV, BR, Network etc.), which we think would
improve matters.

Currently, the process is that we issue an X.Y version of a document
every year or so, and in between we have a (perhaps poorly named, but
let's go with it) "errata" document which lists all of the changes,
updates and improvements we have agreed by ballot to make since the last
version was issued. You can see that process in action here:
https://www.cabforum.org/documents.html

We think it would be better for us to issue a new X.Y.Z version each
time we agree to make a change, and post that on the website (with the
version number and date in the header of the document) under an
unchanging URL of this style:

https://www.cabforum.org/EV_SSL_Latest.pdf

as well as e.g.:

https://www.cabforum.org/EV_SSL_1.4.7.pdf

The advantage of this greater granularity is that it allows auditors and
other consumers of our documents to take our "best efforts" at any point
and use it in their process, while referring to it unambiguously and
succinctly. Currently, they have the choice of either saying:

"We are using EV 1.4 with the Errata document which was current as of
20th January 2013, which had 3 errata in it"

which is unambiguous but highly unwieldy, or:

"We are using EV 1.4"

which is succinct, but means they are not getting the benefit of any
errata; our good work lies unused for up to a year.

If we adopt this proposal, consumers of this document could instead
say, 'We are using EV 1.4.3' to indicate the third minor change to
version 1.4 of the guidelines, instead of mentioning an errata and
date. It's both succinct and unambiguous.

We think this change would also lessen the need for rigid timetables for
handing documents over to auditors and others but, even if we later
institute such timetables, this scheme is still an improvement over the
status quo.

Gerv
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