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Re: RFC 2434 term "IESG approval" (Re: IANA Action: Assignment of an IPV6 Hop-by-hop Option)

2005-06-30 13:37:06
On Wednesday, June 29, 2005 04:18:18 PM -0400 Margaret Wasserman <margaret(_at_)thingmagic(_dot_)com> wrote:

  I don't think the fact that the IESG did not choose to exercise its
authority to allocate this IP option number precludes the proponents of
this allocation from attempting to gain IETF consensus (for which they
would presumably need to publish their draft as an I-D and make any IPR
holding clear), nor does it preclude the authors of this document from
attempting to publish the document as an IETF standard (which would also
mean publishing it as an I-D).

I don't believe the IESG's decision precludes the proponents from taking the proposal through IETF process, one way or another.

I don't think the IESG believed or intended so when it made this decision.

I don't think the IESG intended others to believe so, or to believe that that was its intent, when the announcement was drafted. In fact, it's pretty clear to me that the IESG's announcement specifically left room for just such an action.


Unfortunately, it seems that an awful lot of people either think the IESG's action precludes further attempts to gain registration through IETF process, or think that the IESG intended it to preclude such attempts.



I _do_ think the IESG intended to give the advice that such a proposal would be unlikely to gain IETF consensus, and that therefore would just be a huge waste of everyone's time, including the proponents'. I'm not in a position to guess whether that advice is correct or not, and given the significant cross-area implications of the proposal, I suspect that few IETF participants are in such a position. The IESG as a whole _might_ be in such a position, and obviously believed that it was, or would not have given the advice.


Now, we can debate until the cows come home about whether it was proper for the IESG to give such advice at all. I find myself on the fence, leaning towards "no" on the grounds that doing so creates a chilling effect which makes it harder to evaluate the proposal on its own merits.



Of course, I do understand that these three options are not _really_ as
separate as RFC 2434 seems to indicate that they are...  In order to
establish IETF consensus, it is practically necessary to gain Brian
Carpenter's cooperation, as he is (as far as I know) the only person who
can really put a question the IETF and judge our consensus on the
response.

It should be noted that while Brian's cooperation is necessary for that approach, his support is not.


In any case, I don't think this route is the right one to take, because I agree with the IESG's belief that for work of this sort, touching core internet components (including routing and TCP congestion control), review within the IETF should be a necessary part of the process. If this went to an IETF consensus call, I would argue against assigning an option without IETF review of the protocol; that is, I would argue for the IETF as a whole to make the same decision the IESG did.


-- Jeff

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