From: "Ted Hardie" <hardie(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com>
I would like to note that the use of this process was not agreed to by a
consensus of
the IESG.
Brian sent early versions of this proposal to the IESG, and it received
considerable pushback, some of it from me. I strongly encouraged
Brian to use a design team to draft a charter for a tightly focused
working
group in the General Area instead. I agree with Brian that general
discussion of IETF process change tends to diverge and to move slowly,
but I believe that working groups like NomCom show that we can succeed
with focused charters in establishing new procedures or revising existing
ones. I believe the public chartering process of a focused working group
is a useful, necessary part of the openness of the IETF process, and that
the public discussion within that charter, once established, is critical
for process change of the scope envisioned.
Hi, Ted,
There are a lot of very helpful comments later in your note to Brian, which
I snipped, but I wanted to respond to this paragraph.
While it seems plausible that we could use the same mechanism for protocol
design and for process evolution, my understanding of the Problem working
group's efforts and the subsequent newtrk/icar/proto/mpowr (and yes, there
were others) efforts is that this approach simply does not work.
I used to believe that it could, and was honestly surprised when it didn't.
I was wrong. It happens.
I wrote my observations on "why working groups don't work for process
change" in an early draft of what became RFC 3933. I agreed to remove the
observations in order to publish the draft (the question was, "do you want
to publish the draft or argue about the observations?"), but I still think
Sections 1, 2 and 3 of
http://bgp.potaroo.net/ietf/all-ids/draft-klensin-process-july14-01.txt were
accurate when they were written, and I do not know why these observations
would have been invalidated in the past two years.
Whenever I refer to this version of the draft, I need to add this
disclaimer: The reason this approach fails isn't anyone's fault - it's
systemic. I continue to have the highest respect for the ADs who supported
these efforts to improve things, and for the BOF chairs, WG chairs, and
editors who tried to make improvements happen. But we've already been here.
At the very least, I expect "coming up with a tight charter" to derail any
discussion of evolution until IETF 65. That's what happened in newtrk and
icar, when IETF participants went from discussing proposals to discussing a
charter.
Spencer
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