Hello,
At 15:24 07-10-2014, IETF Chair wrote:
The IESG is considering a change in structure, with the intent to increase
flexibility as IETF work evolves, to ensure that all IETF work is covered by
an AD, and to balance and reduce the workload across the ADs. A significant
amount of the work that is going on in the APP area pertains to the web
protocols, but that has a good deal of crossover with work in RAI. There is
also some crossover work between the APP and TSV areas. While the specific
amount of work in any IETF area fluctuates over time, we have noticed that
the number of WGs in the APP area, particularly on the non-web protocols, is
currently shrinking. So we are starting to think about reorganizing the areas
a bit, possibly merging parts (or all) of the APP and RAI areas into a single
area, possibly redistributing work in other ways between all of the areas,
but in any event changing the load balance among the areas and the ADs,
while continuing the work that the WGs are currently doing. It is explicitly
not our intention to bar any existing or new work from the IETF with these
changes. We are committing to coming up with a proposal to the community
for that by May 2015. We believe the end result of that could be to reduce the
number of areas by one.
I did a quick list of the working groups from non-Application Areas
with work that intersects with the Applications Areas:
DANE
HTTPAUTH
JOSE
MILE
OAUTH
ALTO
CDNI
GEOPRIV
The active groups in the Applications Area [1] are:
APPSAWG
DMARC
HTTPBIS
It worthwhile to consider a change in structure. There isn't much in
common between Applications and Real-time Applications and
Infrastructure Area. My guess is that there is a difference in
culture between those two Areas.
My mild preference would be to select an Applications Area Director
for a year. The IESG can review the structure meanwhile and choose a
medium-term solution. For what it is worth, the Applications Area
has been on a downhill since a while.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
1. I may have missed a few.