Killing old/slow groups - transition thinking

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On 7. desember 2002 07:53 -0800 Marshall Rose <mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us> 
wrote:

> for example: the PACT I-D has an 18 month timeout on WGs getting their
> first I-D approved. it doesn't say how the WG has to behave in order to
> do this (e.g., monthly interim meetings, daily teleconferences, cattle
> prods), it just says do it in 18 months or you die.

just for kicks, I revived some old scripts of mine.
if you check out http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/milestones/milestones.html, 
you will find the list of all milestones in the IETF, sorted by date.

If we kill all the WGs that have more than 1 year since *promised delivery* 
of a document, the following WGs die (in roughly chronological order):

OSPF FTPEXT IFMIB RIP VRRP MANET TN3270E PIM ISIS MSDP DNSOP DHC PPPEXT 
SMIME IPCDN MBONED DNSEXT RMT IPSRA SYSLOG IMAPEXT MOBILEIP MPLS KRB-WG 
WEBDAV ITRACE ACAP CALSCH ATOMMIB LDUP TSVWG CCAMP APEX IMPP OPENPGP TLS 
MSEC STIME L2TPEXT SEAMOBY BMWG IPV6 MAGMA PILC MALLOC ZEROCONF EOS PRIM 
MULTI6 IPSEC TEWG FAX

53 groups, or roughly half the IETF.
I may have missed some, or counted some twice.

The IETF may be better off if we do this.
But - it's work.
Imposing a new rule without doing something about the old groups that don't 
feel bound by the rule will be seen as unfair.
Imposing a new rule on old groups will require a significant amount of 
legwork - some of which will be seen as "meaningless bureaucracy", some of 
which will receive some degree of sympathy.

How should the transition be managed?

(and yes, we have already instituted sending people warnings about their 
expired milestones once or twice a year. Helped a little....not much.)

                     Harald