Subject: Re: Should the IESG rule or not? and all that...

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 19:29:10 -0400

Bob,

I am in violent agreement with much of what you say.  The 
differences may be interesting...

--On Friday, July 01, 2005 10:41 AM -0700 Bob Braden 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> My thoughts on reading the IPv6 H/H Option discussion:
>
> 	Some technical decisions about the Internet protocol suite are
> 	more important that others.  Decisions about application-layer
> 	issues are of course important to particular segments of the
> 	community and industry, but decisions that impinge on the
> 	fundamental communication mechanism of the Internet are
> 	critical to us all.  Such decisions must be made very, very
> 	carefully, with considerable care and not a little wisdom.
>
> 	History has established the IETF as the body responsible for
> 	decisions about the fundamental structure of the Internet.
> 	W3C certainly can set standards at the application layer,
> 	for example, but decisions about the waist of the "hour
> 	glass" belong in the IETF.  We need to take this
> 	responsibility seriously, and waste less time on lawyering
> 	the procedures.

Agreed on both counts.   I've found the lawyering particularly 
bothersome when the discussion turns to what one document or 
another says the IESG _can_ do, rather than what the right thing 
to do is.

> 	You cannot provide "adult supervision" over the Internet
> 	protocol suite with a committee of 2000 people; you have
> 	to delegate a major responsibility to a small group of
> 	technical experts.  Technocratic democracy is fine up to
> 	a point, but ...

I agree, as long as the group involved really are the technical 
experts on the subject matter involved, and as long as they are 
willing to assume that responsibility.  See below.

> 	After Kobe, the IETF established the IESG and IAB as twin
> 	oversight bodies with some responsibility to look after
> 	the overall technical health of the Internet, especially
> 	the important parts.  As a member of the RFC Editor team,
> 	I have had the privilege to sitting in IESG meetings now
> 	and then, and I know from that experience that the IESG
> 	takes this responsibility very, very seriously, as they
> 	ought.

Indeed.  Having been on the IESG right after the post-Kobe 
transition, and having been on every one of their calls for a 
while more recently, I would agree about the seriousness.  I 
have also seen a little more procedure-lawyering and tendencies 
to interpret procedures in ways that are either very narrow or 
very creating and then to appeal to them rather than taking real 
responsibility for actions -- not frequently, but a little more 
frequently than makes me comfortable or that I think should make 
the community comfortable.

> 	It is true that the IETF has no strict control over what bits
> 	people choose to put into IP headers, but in fact we have a
> lot 	of influence.  We can bring quite a bit of informal
> pressure 	against renegade (from our viewpoint) companies or
> bodies.  For 	example, the Host Requirements RFCs successfully
> deprecated and 	effectively eliminated a number of technical
> deviations.  So 	the registration process is important and
> gives us some 	leverage, as long as we continue to act as
> adults.

Yes.  However -- and I think this falls within the range of 
acting like adults -- that influence and ability exert informal 
pressure arises from our ability to reason carefully about what 
we are doing and what we prefer, to explain our reasoning and 
conclusions, and generally to be persuasive about our positions. 
>From my point of view, the Host Requirements RFCs were 
successful precisely because they resulted from very careful and 
fairly open debate, from further review within the community, 
and even from your being willing to supplement them with a 
discussion the process of developing them, including areas in 
which agreement could not be reached (in RFC 1127).

>From my point of view, it would be in the best tradition of the 
IETF for us to say to the other standards bodies involved "look, 
this is our area of expertise, it is potentially harmful to the 
Internet for you to go off and make standards in this area, 
especially so without consulting us, and we want to engage in a 
serious review and technical discussion with you before this is 
registered".  The registration process would help give us 
significant leverage in making sure that discussion was held and 
that people listened carefully to each other, which is, I think, 
what you are suggesting above.   I would hope --and even 
presume-- that such dialogue would either cause the problematic 
proposals to be modified appropriately or even to disappear. 
And I would consider our being willing to engage in such a 
discussion to be adult behavior.   Sounds like we are in 
agreement, yes?

However, consider instead the situation we find ourselves in. 
The IESG, at least in the interpretation as given on this list 
by some of its members, has said, essentially, "We have 
concluded that this requires technical review within the IETF 
before it is registered.  We have the 'right' to decide whether 
such review occurs or not, and we have decided to not arrange 
for it.  Therefore, the registration request is rejected and you 
lose."

Despite the good intentions, of which I have no doubt, that 
sounds more juvenile than adult.  If we were somehow the 
Internet's respected parents, able to impose our 
experience-based preferences on other standards bodies, it might 
still be appropriate.  But we are not: we succeed only when we 
can persuade.  While our experience and track record should be 
persuasive when we reach a conclusion as a community (or via the 
relevant expert subset of it), that persuasion requires that we 
be willing to engage in honest and open discussions, rather than 
displays of authority (parental or otherwise).

While I am very sympathetic to the concerns that Sam and others 
have expressed about allocation of resources, what has happened 
here has none of the properties of technical review by experts 
on the specific subject matter that you suggest above.  It 
involves neither the broad discussion and community review that 
led to 1122 and 1123, nor the notion of a dialogue about 
protocol changes and extensions that are a large component of 
IETF's credibility in this area.   As adult behavior, it is 
perhaps a little bit too close to "nah, nah, it is my game and 
you don't get to play" for my comfort, especially since it is 
_not_ our game, or is our game only as long as we behave like 
adults who are willing to engage in dialogue and explanations 
with others.  And that is where I think we are, collectively, 
falling down on the job and putting both the Internet and the 
IETF's role in it, at risk.

regards,
    john

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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 12:17:33 +0200

John,

John C Klensin wrote:
...
> However, consider instead the situation we find ourselves in. The IESG, 
> at least in the interpretation as given on this list by some of its 
> members, has said, essentially, "We have concluded that this requires 
> technical review within the IETF before it is registered.  We have the 
> 'right' to decide whether such review occurs or not, and we have decided 
> to not arrange for it.  Therefore, the registration request is rejected 
> and you lose."

This *really* is a travesty of what the IESG said. There's nothing
in the BCPs in force that requires the IESG to arrange for a review
and there's nothing in the IESG response that prevents a review.

What the IESG did choose to do was to *express an opinion*. Some
people seem to object to that.

     Brian