Dear All:
I have received a reply from the Free Software Foundation as to why
they directed comments to this list.
The last call
(http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg05617.html)
instructs the public to contact this mailing list in order to express
their comments.
In light of that, I can see how the FSF considered it reasonable to
send public comments this way.
Most notably:
"The IESG is considering approving this draft as a standards track
RFC. The IESG solicits final comments on whether the IETF community
has consensus to publish draft-housley-tls-authz-extns as a proposed
standard. Comments can be sent to ietf at ietf.org or exceptionally to
iesg at ietf.org. Comments should be sent by 2009-02-11."
If the intent wasn't to solicit these kinds of responses, the wording
of last calls may need to be amended in the future, and clarified so
that exactly what is meant by "comments" and if they should actually
be sent to this list. However, unless an alternative avenue was given
it may degrade the reason why last calls are publicized to begin with.
Even if this situation has happened before, the wording of last calls
does seem to imply that comments are encouraged for the purpose of
determining consensus. Given that, it seems unfair to have chastised
these people for having done what the message last Call was asking
them to do, even if the people making said comments may not have been
fully versed on the subject.
Hopefully, now that dialog is opened up and the suggestions given to
me to pass to the FSF have been received, they can go through one of
those avenues. But last calls, if they're not meant to encourage the
kind of response that occurred, should probably be reworded if there
is an alternative place for them to make statements.
Sincerely,
Alex Loret de Mola
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