General comment on draft-ietf-problem-statement-00.txt

[Eric Rescorla]

Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu> writes:

> > Replying to myself, again...  Hey, it's been a long
> > night. :-)
> > 
> > One thing that makes me question how much real power
> > and authority has been delegated to WG chairs is the
> > fact that the "responsible AD" is always expected to
> > be present when the WG meets.
> 
> I didn't think that was a hard-and-fast rule.  But it was often my
> experience that WGs wanted/needed advice of various kinds from ADs
> during a meeting, ranging from process issues (what do the rules say
> about this?) to technical issues (can we get away without a
> mandatory-to-implement authentication mechanism?) to political issues
> (is this likely to get past IESG?)
I agree that that's true, but in my experience (both in companies
and the IETF) is a direct result of a lack of clarity about the
amount of power being delegated. If people suspect that they will
be overrulled or chastised for acting independently then they
generally just pass the buck upwards.

-Ekr


-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/