--On Thursday, 19 April, 2007 20:49 -0700 Bernard Aboba
<aboba(_at_)internaut(_dot_)com> wrote:
In reading the messages posted to the list relating to the
GEOPRIV WG meeting at IETF 68, it strikes me that we have a
situation in which a deadlock was allowed to persist for much
too long.
Whether "standard" or "alternative" mechanisms of consensus
determination can resolve this situation seems almost besides
the point -- a huge amount of energy and time has already been
wasted.
Looking backwards, many of the IETF's most heated battles did
in fact resolve themselves in clear outcomes, but only years
afterwards once it become clear that one or more of the
proposed approaches had little or no support in the
marketplace. For example, recall the LDP vs. RSVP-TE debate.
Given this, I would suggest that debating whether the IESG did
the right or wrong thing at IETF 68 is somewhat besides the
point.
Instead, I would like to ask whether we are furthering
the interest of the Internet community by allowing deadlocks to
persist for long periods, rather than quickly recognizing them
and defusing the situation by publishing the competing
approaches, allowing the market to decide which one is "best".
Bernard,
This comment worries me a bit, but it may be that I don't
understand what you are suggesting. Ignoring GEOPRIV but
speaking very generally, I think we actually have three
different types of deadlock situations and that they call for
different approaches.
(1) Deadlock is apparent but not real: the WG actually has rough
consensus, but the minority positions of a few people are being
expressed loudly and aggressively enough to make the consensus
less obvious and block progress. This calls, IMO, for some
relatively aggressive behavior on the part of WG leadership and,
if necessary, ADs. Letting the dissenters "win" by publishing
their approach as co-equal with the agreed-upon better technical
solution is bad for the Internet and bad for the IETF.
(2) Deadlock is between solutions to different problems. What
is needed is to move beyond arguments about which problem is the
"correct" one to a clear definition of each of the problems and
ways to determine which one is relevant to a particular case,
followed by protocol options or different protocols to select
the relevant problem and the approach that follows.
(3) Deadlock is due to having competing approaches to the same
problem with no clear technical justification for choosing one
rather than another. Publishing all approaches and letting the
marketplace decide almost guarantees non-interoperable solutions
and is, IMO, a disservice to everyone involved. The WG needs to
make a choice as to which one to recommend, even if it has to
admit (and document) the fact that the solutions are equivalent
and even if the choice is made at random, by delegation to a
subcommittee or the AD, etc. If it cannot make or agree to a
choice, then, IMO, the WG should be shut down and _at most_
documents be published as informational descriptions of the
different approaches.
From my point of view, any time the IETF makes a decision that
lowers the odds of interoperability, we fail. If there are no
alternatives to that sort of failure, we should be explicit
about having done so and, ideally, explain and document the
reasons why the failure occurred. Certainly, letting deadlocks
drag out for a long time is another kind of failure and we
should try to make them go away as described above. But
replacing deadlock-failure with interoperability-failure is not
necessarily a good choice.
john
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf