Last Call: 'IETF Problem Statement' to Informational RFC

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On 6. januar 2004 14:23 -0500 Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu> wrote:

>> Right.  Note that 2418 explicitly notes that rough consensus is not the
>> same as unanmity -- chairs are perfectly free to declare consensus even
>> if there are some objections to a document.
>
> True.  However, in 13 or so years in IETF this is the first time I can
> recall that a chair has insisted that last call comments be considered
> valid only if the group has expressed affirmative consensus on them.  I
> believe WG participants have come to expect last call comments to be
> evaluated for reasonableness, not  that they're being asked to reach a
> separate consensus on every issue raised in last call.

Keith,

the mechanism of requiring at least one voice apart from the commenter to 
speak up in support in order for a point to be considered has been used 
before - the case I remember most vividly was Dan Bernstein's objections to 
a number of points related to the DRUMS WG's revisions of the Internet Mail 
protocols.

In this case, there was no explicit invocation of such a requirement by the 
chairs, but there were voices on the list saying "just ship it".

Anyway, your comments have now been entered in my comments tracker, and the 
IESG will evaluate them. Please review to see that they are entered (and 
named) reasonably.

                       Harald