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Re: Please Review Draft IESG Statement on Activities that are OBE

2009-02-03 12:39:29
Hello,
At 16:48 01-02-2009, The IESG wrote:
The IESG is considering publication of the attached IESG Statement on
IETF activities that are overtaken by events (OBE).  Please review and
comment.

[snip]

1. Introduction

IETF activities can be overtaken by events (OBE). For example, assume
that a Working Group is chartered to address a particular problem. While
the working group is developing its solution to the problem, one of the
following events occur:

- unrelated technologies evolve, causing the problem to cease to exist
- unrelated technologies evolve, significantly decreasing the magnitude
of the problem

In these cases, the WG is OBE. Its output no longer merits the
investment that it requires. Therefore, the WG should be rechartered or
terminated.

The draft statement mentions how a WG can be overtaken by events. It describes measures to prevent that from happening and IESG action about publication of WG documents if the WG is overtaken by events. The only mention of whose going to do the OBE pronouncement is through an IESG Note when the document is published.

A WG can also be OBE if the community agrees that it should never have
been chartered for any of the following reasons:

- it addresses an ill-defined problem
- it addresses a non-problem
- it address a problem to which all solutions are worse than the problem

Will the IESG be formally asking the IETF community whether a WG should be declared as OBE?

At 06:44 03-02-2009, Harald Alvestrand wrote:
2) For completeness, I'm also quite puzzled as to why the IESG statement does not contain the words "If the IESG determines that a WG is OBE, the IESG will shut down the working group" at the end of section 2. Even if that happens after the WG submits documents to the IESG, so that the IESG has to follow the advice in section 3, there seems little reason to let it hang around.

If the IESG determines that a WG is OBE, it should say so instead of creating "do not publish" rules.

Regards,
-sm


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