On Sep 2, 2011, at 5:36 PM, ned+ietf(_at_)mauve(_dot_)mrochek(_dot_)com wrote:
In looking through this discussion, I see:
- People saying that moving from 3 steps to 2 steps is a small step in the
right direction, lets do it. Many people who have said this (including I)
have
been silent for a while quite possibly because they have gotten frustrated
with
the endless discussion.
Ross, I'm right there with you. I fully support this document at worse a small
incremental step that clears away the some brush (at best it may actually turn
out to be quite valuable) and I'm completely frustrated that this discussion
is
continuing.
This really needs to stop now. And yes, some people aren't happy with the
outcome. Thems the breaks.
As far as our process is concerned, the question is, do we have rough consensus
to accept it? I think it's dubious that we have such consensus, and apparently
so do others.
Personally I think this proposal is Mostly Harmless, so I'm willing to hold my
nose about it. But I'm very concerned about the argument that the default
assumption should be that we change our process even in the absence of
consensus to do so.
Regarding the proposal, I get the impression that people are mostly in three
camps:
1) Even if this is a baby step, it's a step in the right direction. Or even if
it's not a step in the right direction, taking some step will at least make it
possible to make some changes in our process. Maybe we'll not like the results
of taking this step, but at least then we'll have learned something, and if the
result is clearly worse we'll be motivated to change it.
(I call this "change for the sake of change")
2) Fixing the wrong problem doesn't do anything useful, and will/may serve as a
distraction from doing anything useful.
(I call this "rearranging the deck chairs")
3) People should stop arguing about this and just hold their noses about it,
because the arguing will make it harder to do anything else in this space.
(I call this "Oceana has always been at war with Eurasia". Ok, that's probably
too harsh, but it's what immediately comes to mind.)
All of these are defensible theories. As it happens, I don't believe #1
applies in this space, I do believe #2, and I have to admit that #3 does
happen.
The arguments that people are giving in favor of approving this bother me more
than the proposal itself does. (I'm a firm believer that good decisions are
highly unlikely to result from flawed assumptions, and flawed assumptions often
affect many decisions. So challenging a widely-held flawed assumption is often
more important than challenging any single decision.)
The core problem, I suspect, is that we don't really have any consensus on what
IETF's role is. Is it to help ensure that the Internet works well? Or is it
to enable vendors to ship products that use new/updated protocols as quickly as
possible? These two aren't diametrically opposed, but there's a fair amount of
tension between them.
Keith
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