Charters, "normal process" versus ISOC, etc. (was: Re

Scott Bradner sob at harvard.edu
Sun May 18 12:12:59 CEST 2003


I've been trying to figure out what to say in this debate

I strongly do not like the idea of distorting the normal IETF process in
this or any other "special" case and was having a hard time figuring out
the threat model that said we needed to do so.

I do think that there are quite real problems that need to be fixed but I
do not think that the IETF chair or the IESG are so broken to think that
they could control the evolutionary process by picking a chair that would
do so or to reject the output of a process revision working group even
though they have the structural ability to do so.  I have not seen an
indication that the current IESG members (or the Chair) are so disconnected
from the rest of the IETF to think that they could do that.  (But then
again, I've not seen much input from the current IETF members on this list
so I suppose I could be wrong but I do not think so.)

My preference would be to just do the normal thing and form a working group
in the General Area with the chair(s) for the group being selected by the
IETF Chair (using, for example, the process he used to select the chairs
for the problem statement WG - a quite public process) 

But, if some people are so distrustful of the Chair to keep them from being
able to support the IETF just using IETF processes to change the IETF
(which is what we did the last time) then I think that John's suggestion of
a temporary area is a reasonable one, we have done temporary areas in the
past (with which I have some familiarity) and it is not a distortion of the
basic IETF process.

Scott




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