Lisa Dusseault wrote:
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 9:45 AM, <Bill(_dot_)Oxley(_at_)cox(_dot_)com
<mailto:Bill(_dot_)Oxley(_at_)cox(_dot_)com>> wrote:
I tend to support Doug but havnt had the inclination to post much.
Contributions to consensus during IETF Last Call would have been much
preferable. Still, I'm paying attention. What remedy, changes in text
or changes in status do you support?
Lisa,
Oh boy.
So, I'm going to comment publicly because I think there is significant
probability that you've just jumped us onto a downward spiral that will create
delay, confusion and waste, and I think it better to take exception to it
immediately.
The document went through a serious, thorough and complete process. It has an
active community of knowledgeable, supportive participants, with plenty of
informed and constructive discussion. Consequently, the document has a
rock-solid prima facie basis for being approved.
Well, actually, it's stronger than prima facie. It is a simple, clear, and
useful document. It's handling has been fully conformant with all standard IETF
process. And it has installed base. It is known to work.
Now, it happens that one participant has posted a number criticisms and has
never gotten a single response of support. Not one.
They've posted another note of criticism during Last Call and, again, they got
no notes of support. Not one.
Only after you took the exceptional step of actively soliciting responses to
that posting, after the end of Last Call, did you get exactly one, and that one
offered lukewarm and completely unspecified support for the concerns.
What you've done is a really beautiful example of being *too* diligent.
It's the sort of diligence that makes very good sense to exercise when the
participants are not likely to know what is expected of them. But this ain't
that.
We had a simple, clear, stable and completely legitimate situation with the
document. It was sufficiently simple and clear, that it's likely we are going
to come back to that state... eventually.
But not before going further down this path causes open-ended delay and
possibly
wasteful and useless -- or worse confusing -- modification to the document,
depending on how tenacious you are in trying to assuage these concerns that
have
no rough consensus support.
While it is good and proper for people with concerns to voice them, it is also
good an proper to move past those concerns, when they have failed to obtain
support for change, as is so massively clear in the current case.
Really, Lisa.
Please?
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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