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Re: Shuffle those deck chairs!

2004-10-23 15:30:16
... To my knowledge, both WGs and the IESG do think carefully about
this, but often conclude that the default IETF conditions (RAND) are
realistic and acceptable.

what you call "concluding", i call "railroading" and "inertial ignorance."

From when I was inside the black helicopter, which is a few years ago,
the IESG discussions that I witnessed on this topic were definitely not
conducted in ignorance, but in awareness of the various conflicting
interests.  That doesn't mean the right decisions were reached of course
- the ADs are only fallible humans - but your comment is quite unfair
from what I saw.

i'm not sure what you think my comment means.  WGs who think carefully about
these issues are often dominated by a small number of highly vocal folks, and
many of the "conclusions" are made simply to throw bones to these people so
they'll sit down and shut up and let the agenda proceed.  that's "inertial
ignorance" and if you havn't seen it then i'm surprised.  WG chairs, on the
other hand, sometimes abuse their responsibility as "recognizers of
consensus", either declaring the wrong consensus, or declaring consensus
when there isn't one, or refusing to declare consensus when there is one.
this is "railroading" and again, if you havn't seen it, i'm surprised.

...
1. in spite of not having a clear corporate status, ietf is a de facto
   public trust.  companies and people participate in ietf because they
   believe certain things, and among those things is what brian said:
   "because it's a way to get work done."  there are however other
   things, and exactly what those things are is at the heart of the
   current isoc-ietf-malamud hairball nightmare.  

I think this is a category error.  The proposal on the table is how to
improve the IETF's administration *without impacting the standards
process one bit*.  The concerns you are raising are orthogonal.  So I see
no hairball and no nightmare in draft-malamud.

the nightmare is that we all have to read it and understand it and think
about it and talk about it.  i actually like the work, i just don't like
(a) having to deal with it, and (b) knowing that most ietf participants
aren't going to deal with it (leaving the decision to "those-who-care".)

Let's get the administration working properly.  And let's separate any
discussion of process transparency and IPR policy from that completely.
You're not raising trivial issues here, but they are separable from the
administrative stuff.

i could have sworn that this thread was about patents.  when did we decide
that we were actually talking about "Plan O from Outer Space"?
-- 
Paul Vixie

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