Given those actual or imagined chains of authority, it doesn't
take very many steps to get to "the IESG can tell ISOC what to
write into and 'RFC Editor' RFP and can tell the IAOC how to
interpret that contract". That is a problem because some of us
who believe in independent submissions believe that the first
and most important thing they should be independent of IESG
consensus.
When RFC 3932 was written, I thought this sentence was
the "meat" of the issue:
The new review model will have the IESG take responsibility
ONLY for checking for conflicts between the work of the IETF and the
documents submitted; soliciting technical review is deemed to be the
responsibility of the RFC Editor.
For any independent review stream, I believe that the review by
the IESG is governed by this model. If the IESG and a publisher of
an independent stream disagree about whether there is a conflict with
the work of the IETF, we could still have a problem, but I believe that
this division of responsibility is generally appropriate and has
community support.
At the other extreme, suppose that the IASA (or ISOC), at the
direction of :the IETF" (i.e., the IESG, with or without a
consensus call), issued an RFC that called for an "independent"
stream with conditions placed upon it that permitted the IESG,
without formally consulting the IETF community, to block or
indefinitely delay documents and mandate that any text it liked
was to be put in documents that were published. There would
then be some question as to whether the entity for which the
ISOC was requesting bids could properly be known as "the RFC
Editor" and that might well raise the naming problem.
And here you've lost me. Updating RFC 3932 would require
a new consensus call to the IETF, since it is a BCP. I suppose
it could be argued that it applies only as long as the publisher
of the independent stream is called "the RFC Editor",
and an update to it if that name changes might be necessary.
But the IESG cannot change the rules by which it interacts
with the RFC Editor by RFP or SoW; it would have to get consensus
to do so from the IETF by publishing a new BCP.
I know of no interest in changing the current consensus and no
desire to publish a new BCP; I also don't think such a BCP would
get consensus.
regards,
Ted Hardie
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