--On Friday, 01 October, 2004 20:09 +0200 Eliot Lear
<lear(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:
Kai Henningsen wrote:
Only Harald disagrees with that, because that is certainly
not the question his poll asked - there was no "neither"
option.
Nor need there be. If the leadership is down to these two
choices and one of them is going to be The One<tm>, then you
might as well run with those two choices. Even if the
leadership want to know hypothetically which one is best,
there is still no need to have to state "I don't like either".
Eliot,
I have hoped to not have to get into this explicitly, and have
been talked out of it (or talked myself out of it) several
times. But part of your note calls for a response.
"The Leadership" (the reason I'm capitalizing that term will be
clear below) has only the authority that the IETF community,
rather explicitly, gives them. We have, for example, given the
IESG rather broad authority to interpret the standards process
and to determine community consensus on what should be
standardized. Even there, that distinction is important -- the
IESG has no authority to make or proclaim standards on their own
and has not attempted to do so. But, to take the IESG as an
example, there is nothing in the various procedural documents
that gives them _any_ authority to reorganize the IETF, create
new organizations, etc.
Without such authority, there is rather little difference
between
* Harald (whom I'm picking out only because of the chair
he occupies, not because of anything he has or has not
done) standing up and saying "I am the IETF Chair. With
IESG and IAB support, I have decided X" and
* Joe Blow (a hypothetical person) standing up and
saying "I am the Bozo. With the support of a dozen or
two of my close friends, I have decided Y"
Now, I'm actually a big fan of leadership (small "l"). Without
it, especially in a complex discussion, there are high odds of
everyone going off wandering in the weeds. So I appreciate the
efforts and good intentions of Leslie, Harald, the IAB and IESG,
and those they have worked with, to draw these issues together
into coherent form and to offer good summaries and advice to the
community on what _The Community_ should decide. Those efforts
to summarize the issues and delineate and differentiate choices
have been at least moderately successful in some parts of this
and, in my personal opinion, rather disappointing in others (as
has been pointed out, my producing a summary of an even more
complex discussion and not being able to get it under 360 lines
is not a sign that we have understood all of the issues in a
crisp way).
Everyone has had plenty of airtime on this issue.
Decisions, please.
But I get very concerned, partially because of my doubts about
the extensive training and experience of most of the IAB and
IESG in organizational behavior and structures, enterprise-level
management, large-organization budget management, contracting
and handling multiple subcontractors with interlocking tasks and
critical deadlines, etc., when someone says something that
sounds to me like "ok, start behaving like the King(s) (or
Tyrant(s)) you are and decide for us". We need either clear
community consensus on where we are headed, or clear community
consensus that the IESG and/or IAB (or their Chairs) really
should have decision authority for the community in this
non-standards area. I suggest we have neither at the moment,
although community consensus seems to be becoming more clear on
some parts of the issues.
john
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