Hi Pete,
I think you err when you say this:
A statement such as the above is almost entirely useless to me as an
IESG member trying to determine consensus. It is content-free.
In fact, you do know Russ. If you did not, then the above would be
far closer to correct. But in reality you do know a lot more than
you claim below. With overwhelming probability, your choice #2
applies and I'm very surprised you don't also think that. If it
made a significant difference and I wasn't sure I'd ask Russ to
clarify. For me, I read Russ' mail and I concluded he meant #2.
And I'm confident in that conclusion.
So I'm really bemused when you say that you don't know how to
interpret Russ' mail.
Declaring that mail problematic also seems quite purist to me.
And insisting on purity seems to me worse than being slightly
but harmlessly ambiguous.
At the same time I agree we do not want a procession of +1 mails.
But then we won't get that for this draft. And if we did get that
for any draft, some IETF participants (probably incl. you and I)
would notice that and query it or object. So perhaps you're also
being a tad trigger-happy on jumping on this message.
Lastly, I think evaluating IETF LC messages only in terms
of how they help the IESG evaluate consensus or not is wrong.
Those messages are for and from the IETF community. So if
e.g. some renowned NFS person who's hardly known to the IESG
were to have sent an equivalent message, that might have been
quite good input that Martin or Spencer could have translated for
you. And that's just fine. And it would be fine if Russ' mail
had been directed not at the IESG but at some other part of the
community.
So bottom line, I think you're wrong, Russ' mail was not
content-free.
S.
PS: Yes, this is a not-very-good academic accusing an employee
of an industrial behemoth of excess purity. Go figure:-)
On 06/10/2013 09:37 PM, Pete Resnick wrote:
Russ, our IAB chair and former IETF chair, just sent a message to the
IETF list regarding a Last Call on draft-ietf-pkix-est. Here is the
entire contents of his message, save quoting the whole Last Call request:
On 6/10/13 1:45 PM, Russ Housley wrote:
I have read the document, I a support publication on the standards track.
Russ
A month ago, we had another very senior member of the community post
just such a message (in that case directly to the IESG) in response to a
different Last Call. I took that senior member of the community to task
for it. But apparently Russ either disagrees with my complaint or didn't
notice that discussion on the IESG list, so I think it's worth airing
here in public:
A statement such as the above is almost entirely useless to me as an
IESG member trying to determine consensus. It is content-free.
We don't vote in the IETF, so a statement of support without a reason is
meaningless. We should not be encouraging folks to send such things, and
having the IAB chair do so is encouraging bad behavior. Had I not known
Russ and his particular expertise, I would have no reason to take it
into consideration *at all*. We should not have to determine the
reputation of the poster to determine the weight of the message. Even
given my background knowledge of who Russ is, I cannot tell from that
message which one of the following Russ is saying:
- This document precisely describes a protocol of which I have been an
implementer, and I was able to independently develop an interoperable
implementation from the document.
- This document is about a technology with which I have familiarity and
I have reviewed the technical details. It's fine.
- I've seen objection X to the document and I think the objection is
incorrect for such-and-so reasons.
- My company has a vested interest in this technology becoming a
standard, and even though I know nothing about it, I support it becoming
a standards track document.
- My Aunt Gertrude is the document editor and she said that she needs
statements of support, so here I am.
- I have a running wager on when we're going to reach RFC 7000 and I
want to increase my odds of winning.
I take it I am supposed to presume from my friendship and knowledge of
Russ that one of the first three is true and that the last three are
not. (Well, maybe the last one might be true.) But if instead of from
"Russ Housely", the message was from "Foo Bar", I would have absolutely
no way to distinguish among the above.
I think we should stop with these one-line statements of support. They
don't add anything to the consensus call. I'm disappointed that Russ
contributed to this pattern.
Other opinions?
pr