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Re: Last Call: <draft-farrell-ft-03.txt> (A Fast-Track way to RFC with Running Code) to Experimental RFC
2013-01-14 03:47:30
Hiya,
On 01/14/2013 07:50 AM, Stephan Wenger wrote:
<rant>
...
I understand that this is a rant. And, I'm not ranting back, even if
tempted.
...
Yes, its tempting, but I'm going to resist since its irrelevant IMO.
...
</rant>
I'm not at all sure what concrete suggestion you're making, other
than disparaging GPL. If your suggestion is s/GPLv3/BSD license/
then that could be done but would make no difference at all to
this draft, so I plan to leave this as-is.
Yes, I'm arguing in favor of replacing "GPL" with "BSD", or, even better,
with "public domain". To rephrase the reason for it: ideally, in order to
verify "matching" between software and specification, the software would
need to be accessible to as many people (in practice: IETF participants)
as possible. One extreme is correctly identified: closed source code is,
in almost all cases, accessible only to a very small group of people. The
other extreme is "public domain" source code, where no reasonable lawyer
or business guy has a reason to tell their developers to not touch it.
BSD licensed code comes close, and is more common.
The GPLed code is not at one of the extremes, but middle ground. I would
wager a guess that perhaps less than half of the IETF participants are
allowed to check GPLed code for something as business-uncritical as
fast-tracking a draft. Therefore, GPLed code should not be an example for
universally accessible and verifiable code.
Clearer? Please reconsider your position.
Yes, that's clearer. We're talking about two different continuums
(or continua:-), so either would work, and neither is important to
this draft. I'll make the change if there's enough support for it,
but as I guess you can see, this is an area where we won't get folks
to entirely agree. In this case, we don't need to, since the text
in question is just explanatory and has no significant impact on
the experiment at all.
(BTW, I'll just note in passing that this kind of contentious
irrelevancy is exactly the kind of thing that an author/editor
running the experiment could freely ignore as not meeting the
discuss criteria. That'd be nice, but doesn't apply this time
unfortunately;-)
Second, the draft suggest that the existence of an implementation of the
specification should serve as a shortcut towards RFC, presumably because
such an implementation speak favorably to the implementability of the
specification. That, however, is not universally true.
Very few things in the IETF are universally true;-)
Specifically, if
implementer and spec writer are the same person (or part of the same
team), it is quite likely that the spec takes certain assumptions made
by
the implementers for granted, and does not document it. That would be a
bad spec, accessible implementation or not. The solution to this issue
is
IMO not, as the draft appears to be to suggest, to put burden on WG
chairs
and ADs to ensure that the spec and the implementation match. Both WG
chairs and ADs have enough to do, and the incentive for rubber-stamping
is
quite high. A more sensible solution may be to require that the
implementer is unaffiliated with the spec author; in other words, the
implementation is derived from the spec + IETF discussion context.
That's a fair point but, a) we don't consider affiliations like that
in the IETF, at least not in a written-rules kind of way,
"Affiliation" was not meant as "same employer". Clearly, same team in the
same company is a problem. Co-developer in the same (small) open source
project is a problem. US-based Office of CTO full-time standardizer (of
which the IETF has a fair share, we may like it or not) and code-grunts in
China are IMO not a problem, even if they work for the same mega-company.
There may be a better word than "affiliated" to describe this
relationship. That word escapes me, though. (Standard excuse: not an
English native speaker.)
and b) there's
nothing in principle wrong with the editor writing code.
For the purpose of short-cutting an approval mechanism (and only in this
s/short-cutting/speeding up/
context), I disagree, for the reasons already mentioned. Outside of that
context, I'm fully with you, and I wish there would be more of those
multi-purpose types.
While it
is better if the code is written independent of the editor and even
better if someone who hasn't been involved in the WG has done the
coding, that'd be too high a burden to require IMO, especially given
that this is an experiment.
Ack.
I'd have no problem adding text that encouraged some form of
independence though, if you'd like to provide some.
How about:
"If the source code has been developed independently of the authoring of
the draft (and ideally by non WG participants), it is likely that the
implementation and the draft match, and that pitfalls unaware developers
may find have been found and dealt with. If, on the other hand, draft
author(s) and implementation developer(s) overlap, then it is sensible to
scrutinize the draft more closely, both with respect to its match with the
implementation and for assumptions that author/developer may have taken
for granted which warrant documentation in the draft."
That'd be no harm to add. I don't know that it improves the document
enough to bother though. I'll think about it, but let's see if anyone
else cares.
A third comment would be that, if you interpret the draft strictly, it
is
highly unlikely that the experiment would ever be exercised, as the
implementation needs to "match" the draft to be advanced, and that would
mean that the implementation has to follow in lockstep with the draft
development up until the final version. With respect to the core
subject
matter of a draft, that may be fine. However, many of the final edits
in
a draft come as input from IETF wide community review; things like
security, congestion control, and the like. Those are often trivial to
write down, but can have a major implementation impact. To cure this,
it
would IMO be acceptable if the implementation would be required to match
the latest or a reasonably young, i.e. a few months old version of the
draft.
Another fair point but again one where its not really possible to
describe a rule that'd be better and more precise than "match."
I don't think a rule mentioning earlier or older drafts would be
useful for this.
I'll see if I can come up with something better than "match" but
if you have text to suggest, that might help.
Trying:
"Match means that all, or substantially all, protocol mechanisms of the
draft are implemented, that no other code points are implemented that
would reasonably fall into the scope of the draft in question, that all
documented state machines are implemented and no other state machines, and
so forth. The over-the-wire behavior of the implementation and of the
draft should substantially match, including more subtle points such as
timing relationship of messages, . Minor divergences in details stemming
from unaligned development cycles of draft and implementation are
acceptable."
I like most of that, thanks. For now, I've added this to 2.1, let me
know if it works:
We do not give a precise definition for "match" here but the intent
is that all, or substantially all, protocol mechanisms of the draft
are implemented, that the over-the-wire behavior of the
implementation and of the draft should substantially match, including
more subtle points such as timing relationship of messages, etc.
Minor divergences in details stemming from unaligned development
cycles of draft and implementation are acceptable.
Cheers,
S.
PS: There's a working draft at [1] in case that helps.
[1] http://down.dsg.cs.tcd.ie/misc/draft-farrell-ft-04.txt
Cheers,
S.
Please consider this.
Thanks,
Stephan
On 1.11.2013 08:21 , "Adrian Farrel" <adrian(_at_)olddog(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk>
wrote:
Hi Alexa,
Please be aware of this document that has just entered a four-week IETF
last
call. The document describes a proposed IETF process experiment under
the
rules
of RFC 3933.
The proposed experiment calls on the IETF Secretariat to take specific
actions
under certain circumstances in corner cases of the experiment. Could
you
please
have someone in the Secretariat look at the draft and comment on the
practicalities of the actions. Note that, at this stage, no changes to
the tools
are proposed so any actions would require manual intervention (if the
experiment
were successful and resulted in permanent changes to IETF process we
might make
changes to the tools at some future time).
Thanks,
Adrian
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-announce-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org [mailto:ietf-announce-
bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of The IESG
Sent: 11 January 2013 15:15
To: IETF-Announce
Subject: Last Call: <draft-farrell-ft-03.txt> (A Fast-Track way to RFC
with
Running
Code) to Experimental RFC
The IESG has received a request from an individual submitter to
consider
the following document:
- 'A Fast-Track way to RFC with Running Code'
<draft-farrell-ft-03.txt> as Experimental RFC
The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org mailing lists by 2013-02-08. Exceptionally,
comments may
be
sent to iesg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org instead. In either case, please retain
the
beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.
Abstract
This memo describes an optional, fast-track way to progress a
working
group document to IESG review. It is provided as a process
experiment as defined in RFC 3933 for use when working group chairs
believe that there is running code that implements a working group
Internet-Draft. The motivation is to have the IETF process
explicitly consider running code, consistent with the IETF's
overall
philosophy of running code and rough consensus.
In this process all of working group last call, IETF last call, and
Area Director review are carried out in the same two week period.
Only comments that meet IESG Discuss criteria need to be addressed
during this stage, and authors are required to make any changes
within two weeks.
This experiment will run for one year.
The file can be obtained via
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-farrell-ft/
IESG discussion can be tracked via
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-farrell-ft/ballot/
No IPR declarations have been submitted directly on this I-D.
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