At 20:01 05-06-2013, l(_dot_)wood(_at_)surrey(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk wrote:
RFC2031 documented the takeover. Snuck through on informational...
It's part of the poorly documented historical facts which happened
after some IETF financial woes.
I read draft-iab-rfc4441rev-04 again. Section 1 mentions that:
"This version of the document responds to comments received during IAB
Last Call."
I would have expected the IAB to catch issues which are related to the IETF.
Section 3.1.4 lists "Balance between mailing lists and meetings" as a
cultural difference. The last sentence in the paragraph:
"Attendance at meetings is critical to influencing decisions
and to maintaining membership voting rights."
sums up a major difference. It could be said that a standard setting
organization is dominated by interest groups (see RFC 6852) which can
afford the air travel if major decisions are made during a plenary or
interim meetings.
In Section 3.3.1.4:
"However, since IEEE 802 work-in-progress is copyrighted, incorporating
material into IETF documents or posting"
The above does not describe correctly why it is not possible to
incorporate the material. It could mention that due to copyright
restrictions, incorporating materials into IETF documents or postings
is not allowed.
In Section 3.3.1.5:
"IEEE 802 standards, once approved, are published and made available
for sale."
This could be a cultural difference. RFC 6852 glosses over that (see
"Standards specifications are made accessible to all for
implementation and deployment.")
BTW, the draft could be made shorter by incorporating the relevant
topics by reference instead of describing them in the draft. RFC
6756 has a better layout in my opinion. RFC 4441 describes the
policies and procedures that have developed in order to coordinate
between the IETF and IEEE 802. draft-iab-rfc4441rev-04 mentions that
it describes the standardization collaboration between the IETF and
IEEE 802. The result looks like a "Taoesque" mix of IETF and IEEE
802 material.
Why is it important to explain the IAB responsibilities?
Why is it important to explain IESG and IAB member appointments?
What does cross-referencing documents have to do with the relationship?
I suggest looking at the draft while taking the above
(non-exhaustive) list of questions into consideration. The details
of the collaboration, e.g. how to get a password, can be documented
through a Wiki. The IEEE does a decent job of documenting its
standards document lifecycle; it's less convoluted than the
IETF. The relevant URL is not mentioned in the draft. The draft
lists analogies between the IETF and IEEE 802 whereas the reality is
that the two organizations operate differently. The details of that
is written as politically appropriate version of reality.
Regards,
-sm