Hi Eric,
Following up on this ...
On 10/8/2007 11:30 AM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
At Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:13:50 -0700,
Lakshminath Dondeti wrote:
Thanks Jari, Eric. Some notes inline ...
On 10/8/2007 12:03 AM, Jari Arkko wrote:
<snip>
Currently this
document simply has it at the IESG's discretion:
If at any point during the Working Group formation process, including
after a first or second BoF session, interest within the IETF and
end-user community has been demonstrated, but one or more Working
Group formation criteria outlined in [RFC2418] Section 2.1 has not
yet been met, the IESG MAY propose that a Study Group be formed.
This seems ripe for abuse of the kind I outlined above. IMO this
document would benefit from a clearer statement of the conditions
under which it was appropriate to form an SG, thus reducing pressure
on ADs.
I am not sure what kind of "abuse" you are worried about Eric. Please
clarify.
You trimmed out the section where I explained:
A related issue is that this puts pressure on ADs to approve SGs for
efforts that they would ordinarily simply refuse WGs for. I.e.,
"OK, so you won't give us a WG, how about a SG". Currently this
document simply has it at the IESG's discretion:
I didn't connect "abuse" and suggesting a direction in bringing new work
to the IETF. :)
To clarify, the reasonably high bar for WG formation plus the two
BOF rule has the effect of enabling ADs to say so "No" to work
that really is not ready. The concern is that efforts which are
denied WGs will turn around and ask for an SG and that it will
be difficult to turn them down even though they really need to go
back to the drawing board.
As Jari notes, the ADs should still say "No" to work that is not ready.
Suppose after a first BoF or after initial evaluation, an AD considers a
piece of work to be sufficiently important and pertinent to be done at
the IETF; telling an ad hoc group of folks to develop the idea offline
and come back again, say after ~4 months, may not work well in all cases.
This would be helpful. Bernard, Laksminath, any ideas?
I don't think we should make it algorithmic and instead should leave the
steering, direction and judgment aspects of an IESG job intact.
Nor did I argue differently. However, there is a difference between
exercising judgement and unguided sole discretion. My concern is
that the language in the draft errs to far in the latter direction.
There is a balance we need to achieve here. On the one hand we don't
want to create check lists; on the other hand we do want to avoid the
possibility of, in your words, "unguided sole discretion."
We could make the guiding text more precise (perhaps include some
specific criteria), if that is what the community wants.
Yes, I think this would be valuable.
Bernard and I will work on some wording.
Arguably, SG formation should be subject to an IETF LC in the
same way that WG formation is.
Hm. I believed this was already the case. SGs are subject to exactly
the same process as WGs, and I was assuming that like, WG formation,
SG formation would include discussion in the IESG, consultation
with the IAB, and IETF Last Call.
Perhaps this needs clarification. Authors?
We could clarify, but the intent is to follow the WG process for formation.
In that case, I think it needs clarification.
Ok.
Finally, it's unclear the extent to which SGs are intended to
transition directly to WGs without going through another BOF
phase. I have two concerns here:
1. It will be hard for the IESG to deny "successful" SGs the right
to form a WG.
Saying NO is still going to be needed.
2. BOFs are a defined in-person event at which everyone knows that
WG formation is being considered. This provides an opportunity
for public high bandwidth discussion of that topic. I don't
think an LC on the IETF list is an adequate substitute.
Good point. Bernard, Laksminath -- any ideas here?
I disagree with Eric here. I believe that we are not a meeting based
organization and should be making more of these important decisions via
email where we have more time to consider the proposals carefully.
Well, you might prefer that the IETF functioned this way, but I think
it pretty clearly does not. As a practical matter, nearly all WGs have
BOFs prior to their formation, and that's the only time that there
is high-bandwidth cross-area discussion. That same discussion by and
large does not happen on the IETF mailing list during LC. IMO the
effect of eliminating the in-person time will be to eliminate said
discussion, not transfer it to the mailing list. If you wish the IETF
to do more work via email, I think the first step would be to improve
the quality of the email discussion.
I knew this discussion will sidetrack us. I am sorry I started it. We
can talk about it some other time.
My
observation based on some of the BoFs I have been involved with recently
is that far too much time is wasted between two BoF sessions. With
little or no discussion between sessions, a good portion of the meeting
time is used to get on the same page (again).
I consider this a good indicator that the work is not ready to bring
to the IETF.
I agree with Brian's response to this.
regards,
Lakshminath
-Ekr
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