Subject: Re: The process/WG/BCP/langtags mess...

From: Bruce Lilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 19:42:33 -0500

>  Date: 2005-01-11 13:33
>  From: "Addison Phillips [wM]" <[email-masked]>

Addressing some issues not covered by others:

> In this case we have developed an I-D which would like to obsolete an existing BCP which itself obsoletes a BCP. The I-D was developed using the exact same process, procedures, small-"c" community, and so forth that its predecessors used. I will not argue the subjective issues of whether the community working on this was large enough or the right one nor the procedural issue of whether enough notice was given to others. After that work has progressed for nearly a year and a half, though, we find ourselves in a Last Call. Certainly those individuals and groups not involved in the cut-and-thrust of this draft's development are entitled to an opportunity to consider and comment on our choices, including the requirements we chose to address and the suitability and compatibility of our solution.

To be clear, it's a New Last Call which followed an earlier Last Call.
Judging by the comments on the technical content and by the authors'
comments, it appears that there is to be at least one more draft
revision, and therefore presumably yet another New Last Call. One
might ask whether hashing out details on the ietf and ietf-languages
lists is an effective way to move forward (as opposed to a WG).

> Procedural questions about how this should have happened are interesting and important to the IETF at large, but given the specific details of our draft's development, wouldn't it be responsible to separate the two discussions and focus on the draft at hand? I feel that the technical comments about our draft to date have mostly been related to compatibility with specific existing protocols or implementations. I feel that we have suitable ways to address these concerns (either via persuasion or via modifications to the draft). Neither Mark nor I are wild-eyed zealots or starry-eyed purists: we are willing to make adjustments and modifications that make sense in order to achieve the necessary consensus or revise or abandon aspects of the document that raise valid issues.

In large measure the technical issues and procedural issues have
been discussed separately.  They do, however converge inasmuch as
the lack of an IETF WG has presumably been a factor in lack of IETF
participation in the discussion prior to Last Calls, and the consequent
lack of consideration of IETF protocols (including core Internet
protocols).

> So.... what do we need to do to address (a) concerns about requirements for the draft and (b) concerns about technical objections?

I believe that formation of an IETF working group as suggested by
several commentators would address both issues.  I have separately
suggested that via an RFC 2026 section 6.5.2 comment sent to
[email-masked] on 2004-12-27.  It has not yet appeared on the
"Appeals to IESG" page (Harald, if you can't find it, let me
know off-list, and I'll resend it).
 
> If we use the ietf-languages list to discuss the these sets of issues, then perhaps we can demonstrate the maturity of the draft and progress to BCP. 

The ietf-languages list, as also noted during recent discussion,
is supposed to be for review of language-tag registrations, not
for general discussion. The language-tag reviewer has also recently
noted his displeasure with the general discussion.  Again, setting
up an IETF WG with its own mailing list would address that problem
as well as the ones noted above.

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From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:11:05 +0100

Dear Bruce,
I changed the subject as the referred case only shown different network 
architecture confusions. Positively addressing this confusions will help 
more the solution of the case at hand than anything else.

On 01:42 12/01/2005, Bruce Lilly said:
>The language-tag reviewer has also recently noted his displeasure with the 
>general discussion.  Again, setting up an IETF WG with its own mailing 
>list would address that problem well as the ones noted above.

Obviously a formal WG with a formal Charter approved by the IESG and 
reviewed by the IAB (I detail so John Klensin is happy) is the best (I 
would say "only" if there must be relations with W3C) solution. The 
organization of such a WG is to follow the BCP 025 rules (RFC 2418).

This means that your mail starts on the general list the debate on a new 
WG. But we are to be careful in not proposing an inadequate WG which would 
increase confusion. The [email-masked] list has for several 
years carried well a job in a WG like fashion. Since the competence of the 
authors cannot be questioned, the "mess" probably shows that the problem 
was with its charter and in the resulting pattern of aggregated competences 
(see below). In a private mail copied to the Application Area Directors I 
have suggested a WG which would scale the particular langtag problem to the 
general issue of consistent a tagging in protocols, procedures, services 
and applications, to a WG-Tags. This would not remove 
[email-masked] the custody of the RFC 3066 (bis) langtags they 
shown they know to govern well.

My rationales are that:

1. we are in a typical case described by RFC 2418 Part 2.3 first 
paragraph  ("Proposed working groups often comprise technically competent 
participants who are not familiar with the history of Internet architecture 
or IETF processes. This can, unfortunately, lead to good working group 
consensus about a bad design."). IMHO the WG set-up process should be 
enough to make authors feeling the minor (yet blocking) points to correct.

2. the real blocking factor is that the proposed solution does not scale 
(it is OK for a user to chose in a menu, not for independent web services 
negotiating a common interinteligibility through commonly identified 
identical language dictionary, semantic, locale, defaults, etc.). IMHO this 
both will be the same in other areas than languages, and comes from the 
lack of a generalized tagging concept, semantic, filtering language, 
multilingualization rules and tools, libraries, tables, icons, etc.

Once such a WG starts working langtags could be taken as a first example 
and benefit from a more generalized and innovative support, rather then 
being challenged (at everyone cost and delay) by a universal cultural 
ontology including a language (arts, music, publishing, icon, soundex, 
period, authors, etc.) tagging semantic.

jfc