On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 09:44:58AM -0700, Dave CROCKER wrote:
The questions constitute a denial of service attack on IETF operations.
In terms of principle, I and others have pointed out the basic flaw in
asking these types of question. The mere fact of having some questions
does not justify asking them and most certainly does not justify
requiring that they be answered.
In terms of pragmatics, you are missing the fact that there is an
infinite number of questions that one can ask and that it is not feasible
to answer them, nevermind require that they be answered.
Historically, the general culture of the IETF is that if people have a
good question, it's always in scope to raise it. After all, as an
engineering organization, our goal is protocols that _work_, and not
just following "Policies and Procedures". In fact, I'd like to think
that part of the IETF culture which makes things different with say,
ISO. With ISO, even if the protocol is fatally flawed, if it's in
wrong part of the process, they'll go ahead and approve the standard
just because the right number of national bodies had voted on it.
With the IETF, even at last call, if someone can raise a valid
technical objection that hasn't been previously considered, the IESG
is supposed to consider that objection. If they don't, that can be a
valid matter to appeal. So it seems kind of out of the IETF culture
to say, "this question is shouldn't be answered" because it didn't
come from the wrong part of the structure. That's like saying that a
Management AD can't raise a question about security because they
aren't from the Security Area. It's not considered a "denial of
service attack". It's considered a valid issue that should be considered.
Ultimately, of course, there are checks and balances to make sure it's
not a question that has already been asked and answered, and whether
or not the question is valid or not. But we generally don't say, "la
la la la la --- it's not even right to ask the question because you're
not from the right area".
- Ted
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