Hi Ted, John,
[I changed the subject line]
At 07:10 PM 2/18/2017, Ted Lemon wrote:
Joel Halpern pointed out privately that I somewhat misrepresented
the process here. The IETF review process for working group
charters does not require that there be IETF consensus to approve
the charter. This is true, butdoesn't actually refute my claim
that it is a process failure if the IESG approves a charter and then
allows a working group to do work that exceeds the bounds of the
charter. That _is_ a process failure, in the simple literal sense
that the process did not produce the right outcome: the IETF
community was not given an opportunity to review the charter that
would have included the work that was done. If we think that's
okay, why do we have working group charters at all?
A Working Group charter is approved by the IESG and the IAB [1]. The
working group charter would be a theoretical exercise if the charter
which was published diverges significantly from what was actually
done. I agree that it is a process failure.
The way the process _should_ have gone in this case is that when the
IESG noticed that new work needed to be done by a particular working
group, they updated the charter to reflect that, and got IETF review
of the updated charter. In this case, you are right that if the
IETF community was clearly opposed to the new work, the IESG could
still approve the charter. But this would be extraordinary.
It does not seem that difficult to ask for a recharter. The relevant
AD(s) could bring the matter to the attention of the IESG instead of
having to ignore or to deal with a process failure.
And this is why the IETF community shouldn't treat charter updates
as pro forma. Charter review is an important part of the feedback
mechanism that keeps the IETF a consensus-driven
organization. Doing out-of-charter work, or lawyering the charter
to say that work that really isn't part of the intent of the charter
nevertheless conforms to the letter of the charter, bypasses this
important step.
Describing the process issue as "lawyering" conveys the idea that it
is unreasonable to complain about such issues. I agree with what you
wrote about the feedback mechanism.
At 07:56 PM 2/18/2017, John C Klensin wrote:
There are a number of dimensions of the problem. One could
debate their ranking by importance, but I'm not sure the
exercise would be productive. I would encourage you to find the
Agreed.
Yes, as long as you remember that they are supposed to be
representing the will of the community and accountable to it.
Neither WG Chairs nor ADs have any other source of authority.
The difficulty with your statement above is that it can be read
to imply that there are no constraints one, or appeals from, the
decisions. That is not true or, more specifically, if one wants
a healthy IETF that produces credible work, it better not be.
It is possible to appeal the decision of the WG Chair, and if that
fails, to file an appeal with the Responsible AD. There is still an
option to file an appeal if the issue is noticed later in the process.
There are constraints. At the WG level, the WG Chair is accountable
to the Area Director. A competent Area Director would probably ask
for an explanation if the document exceeds the scope of the WG
Charter. I don't know the details of the case [2] to form an opinion
about the matter.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
1. The wording which I used is imprecise.
2. https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg101489.html