Generally applicable comments on 3929:
1)This scheme would put excessive power in the hands of the few: the
Chairs, who are appointed (indirectly) by the elite few who can pay
non-trivial sums of money to attend lots of IETF meetings, such sums
generally provided by large corporations with entrenched interests. It
also further empowers the chairs to determine whether rough consensus
has been reached. Increasing the power of entrenched interests is
DESTRUCTIVE. This plan, if implemented, will make decision-making in
the IETF WORSE than it is now.
2)A major failure of , e.g. the MARID WG (including the Chairs) was the
failure to encourage/require a cost (in the broadest sense of the term)
analysis of the proposals. This scheme fails to encourage that too.
Instead it just says "the working group chair(s) should also make
an explicit call for consensus, summarizing the technical issues and
the choice to be made."
Cost analysis is not a technical issue. (But I hope it's in MARID's new
charter if it gets re-chartered! (Anyone pushing for that?))
3)The author fails to adequately consider the benefits of
experimentation: continued experimentation and discussion is removed as
an option.
4)In general, where there are competing proposals, instead of 3929,
there should be a push for documents providing things such as pros and
cons, cost-benefit analyses, rationale, and context that will help
inform the membership and lead to consensus.
MARID specific comment:
What happened here doesn't seem to be a failure, but rather was a
success in the following sense: There was not sufficient maturity in the
proposals for a rough consensus to be reached that the proposals were
adequate to meet the bare minimum of goals that they needed to meet.
The process brought the fact to light that the proposals were
inadequate. Many of us weren't aware of this early on. 3929 seems to
assume that a failure to reach a rough consensus must mean there's a
problem in the process, when in fact it could be in the proposals.
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004
From: rfc-editor
To: ietf-announce
Subject: RFC 3929 ...
Odd that the post to IETF-announce came 3 months after the IESG's approval.