Sorry to prolong this correspondence but I have a couple of comments below on
Mike's
comments.
As background, here is what I consider to be a key extract from RFC 4071:
"3.3. Relationship of the IAOC to Existing IETF Leadership
The IAOC is directly accountable to the IETF community for the
performance of the IASA. However, the nature of the IAOC's work
involves treating the IESG and IAB as major internal customers of the
administrative support services. The IAOC and the IAD should not
consider their work successful unless the IESG and IAB are also
satisfied with the administrative support that the IETF is receiving."
I suspect that this is why giving the IESG and IAB each an ex officio
seat and the power to appoint one member seemed natural in 2004/2005.
On 07/02/2016 09:47, Michael StJohns wrote:
See below
On 2/6/2016 2:06 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
Mike,
The IAB has oversight responsibility for the RFC Editor. The IAOC oversees
the IAD, who manages contracts for the community, including the RFC editing
contracts. I therefore believe that having a voting IAB member among the
voting
members of the IAOC is appropriate. Otherwise the IAB doesn't have a clear
"chain of command" (or, alternatively, "the buck stops here") linkage to
that aspect of the RFC Editor.
A similar argument shows why the IAB should be directly linked to the
IETF Trust, which holds the rights in RFCs and may come to hold the rights in
IANA data.
Neither argument shows that the person needs to be the IAB Chair, IMHO.
I regard this as quite disjoint from how the ordinary members of the IAOC
are appointed. Splitting that job between the IESG, the IAB and the Nomcom
was a fairly arbitrary choice, but I think the Nomcom has a big enough
job already.
Brian
Hi Brian -
IMO, I think you've made a good argument for retaining at least one IAB
member on the IAOC, an incomplete argument for why that
member need not be the IAB chair and a very poor argument as to why the IAB
should continue to appoint a second person.
WRT the incomplete argument I'd ask the current (and past members) of the
IAOC to comment on the following questions (to
paraphrase Leslie's note quite a bit):
Are there specific benefits to the IAOC to having the IAB chair continue
as a member of the IAOC that would not be met if
he/she were replaced by another member of the IAB?
Are there specific issues the IAOC might encounter if the IAB chair were
not a member of the IAOC and how could those issues
be mitigated?
[If you were still on the IAOC,] Would you object to the change and for
what reasons?
So far I *think* I haven't seen anyone currently on the IAOC comment on the
above.
For the poor argument related to why the IAB should continue to appoint a
second person - seriously?? "The Nomcom has a big
enough job already". I might find this a reasonable argument if (and pretty
much only if) the Nomcom weren't already required
to (advertise for and interview and ) appoint an IAOC member every term.
AFAICT, having the Nomcom change that to two (or even
three) per year and removing the need for the other two (or three - not quite
sure about ISOC) bodies to advertise, interview,
and select would reduce the workload on the IAB, IESG and maybe ISOC without
actually increasing the workload of the Nomcom much
if at all. [This is based on the observation that the same people will
probably apply to the IAB, IESG and Nomcom solicitations
and if all three bodies are doing their jobs in a complete manner similar to
what the Nomcom should be doing, that seems like a
lot of redundancy in the process.]
That's a valid point. In fact, iirc, it quickly proved necessary to have some
private communication, made tricky by the confidentiality of the Nomcom process,
to avoid oversights in the IAOC selection process. I'm not against opening
up that discussion, but we'd need to hear what several past Nomcom Chairs think
about it. It is of course orthogonal to the draft under discussion.
Brian