I read 3777 as somewhere in between, with some important caveats.
As I understand the rules and practice of the game we are playing:
The IESG (and the IAB and IAOC) specify what they want to see (their job
requirements).
The nomcom collects those, and community input. Community input is
explicitly asked for both on candidates, positions, and general
operational behaviors. This includes community feedback on the job that
needs to be done.
The nomcom selects candidates.
The nomcom tells the confirming body who the candidates are, what the
nomcom felt the requirements were and why, and how the candidate meets
the requirements.
the confirming body reaches its conclusion, and responds.
Do note that while the nomcom is free to interpret the job requirements,
they are NOT free to redefine the job. If asked for a Security AD, they
can not appoint an extra applications AD. Even i the community input
strongly led them to conclude that is what is needed.
One of the interesting things is that the nomcom does not in practice
have a way to tell the community exactly what it decided the job
requirements are. I say this because the explanation of how the
requirements were interpreted is often tied in with the available and
selected candidates and their qualifications, which must not be
discussed with the community. And the confirming body can not tell the
community what it did with the nomcom statements.
Yours, through my narrow lenses,
Joel
On 3/7/2013 4:28 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 01:02:09PM -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
in the interpretation across different Nomcoms. Since this is a
strategic issue, it's too important to leave that ambiguous, IMO.
Why? It seems to me that merely having drawn attention to these bits
of RFC 3777 provides a hint to future nomcoms that they may not be so
bound as they think. Why isn't that enough? I suppose it may be too
late for this year, but this fact will surely be remembered by some
eligible volunteers next year, and they can use the apparent power
they already have to modify the stance the Nomcom takes. No?
The alternative seems, to me, to be yet another IETF meta-discussion.
These seem inevitably to be giant time-holes into which we throw our
most engaged participants, and in this case we'd be doing it where the
RFC and the existing practice don't align well. Why not just realign
to what the text says?
Best,
A