what the "scope" disagreement is about

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 01:03:22PM -0700, Tony Hain wrote:
> Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> > My apologies to Tony for taking this couple-of-paragraphs 
> > from a very long thread on IETF-Discuss out of context, but I 
> > was curious about his choice of words:
> 
> I specifically chose those words, because the DNS community has
> repeatedly decided not to deal with this in the IETF, even though many
> of the members ship versions of a solution. We have a core
> infrastructure service that is out of step with the architecture of the
> network it is being used to describe. So this is a case where the IESG
> needs to step up and task a group that has not decided to deal with it
> on its own.

Without trying to step into the architectural question (which is being
debated on other lists) itself, the first problem is that there has
not been architectural consensus about what is the right way to
address this particular problem.  And worse yet, it spans multiple
working groups and multiple areas.

So on the one hand this is the sort of thing that crys out for the IAB
to get involved, but ever since Kobe, and especially on an issue as
contentious as this one has proven to be, I don't know that the IAB
would consider itself empowered to say, OK, this is the way to do
things.  Only then could we have the IESG to "task a group" to solve
this particular issue in this particular way....

To take this back to the problem-statement wg, this is another example
of the "who makes the hard, fundmental architectural decisions that
span multiple working groups" question --- and makes decisions that
actually stick, as opposed to suggestions which are often ignored.  In
the absense of such a group, then each working group makes choices in
isolation, and it's only natural that they optimize for their own
convenience and/or interest.

	"We don't want this ugly wart in *our* architecture, so we'll
	make it the DNS's problem instead.  Yeah, that's the ticket...."

(And to Randy and other members of the DNS directorate: before you
come hunting for me, I am *not* the one advocating this; quite the
opposite, in fact....  :-)

						- Ted