Should RFC 2119 be normative or informative?

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Juergen Schoenwaelder wrote, in reference to
the newly-posted draft-ietf-ops-taddress-mib-04.txt:
> This revision just splits the references section into normative and
> informative references as requested by Bert Wijnen.

I notice that RFC 2119 is listed in the new draft as a normative reference.
While that's not unreasonable, I didn't do this on the standards-track
MIB document for which I was the lead editor because RFC 2119 is
BCP, not standards track, and I was under the impression that it could
not be a normative reference for that reason.  At least, that's how I read
the following note on page 16 of RFC 2026:

   Note: Standards track specifications normally must not depend on
   other standards track specifications which are at a lower maturity
   level or on non standards track specifications other than referenced
   specifications from other standards bodies.  (See Section 7.)

This is not a big deal, I'm perfectly happy to follow whatever ruling
is made, but I do think that all our standards track documents ought
to do the same thing about this.

Thanks,

Mike