Subject: Re: Appel due to management of the "site-local issue"

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 15:56:31 -0400

Hi Leif,
 
This message is a reply to the appeal that you filed on August 5, 2003
regarding our management of the "site-local issue" (the full text
of your message is included below).
 
If we understand your appeal properly, you object to the e-mail poll
that we sent to the IPv6 mailing list on August 4, 2003 with the
subject of "Moving forward on Site-Local and Local Addressing" (the
text of that message is also included below).  You believe that this
e-mail re-opened the question of whether or not to deprecate
site-local addressing, and you consider it unacceptable for the chairs to
re-open that question on the IPv6 WG mailing list because some of the
parties who may wish to provide input on that issue are not currently
subscribed to the IPv6 mailing list.

We agree with you that the WG has consensus to deprecate the usage of
site-local unicast addressing, as discussed at the WG meeting at IETF
56 in San Francisco and confirmed on the list in April 2003.  At that
time, we found that the WG had consensus to deprecate the usage of
IPv6 site local unicast addressing AND to investigate alternatives for
local addressing, and we outlined a course of action to do both
things in parallel.

It is sometimes appropriate for WG chairs to re-open questions with
the WG -- either because there is new information available, or
because there is some other reason to believe that the consensus of
the WG has changed.  However, we do not believe that those conditions
currently apply to the deprecation of site-local unicast addressing,
and it was not our intention, by sending our message on August 4th,
to re-open the question of site-local deprecation.  We were attempting
to further refine how the WG should move forward on the course of
action that we had defined in April.

In retrospect, however, we do understand your concern about the third
option we offered:

"C) Deprecate Site-Local addresses after an alternative is defined,
standardized, and in operational practice."

This option could be interpreted as indefinitely delaying (and
effectively overturning) the decision of the IPv6 WG to deprecate
site-local addressing.

Fortunately, support for this option in the WG was very low, and it
is clear that we continue to have IPv6 WG consensus to deprecate
site-locals in parallel with developing an alternate local addressing
mechanism.  Less fortunately, the WG continues to be split on the
question of whether we should deprecate site-local addressing
immediately, or only after an alternative has been defined.

However, we do not agree with one major point of your appeal.  We
believe that the IPv6 mailing list is the appropriate forum for the
IPv6 working group to discuss issues and make decisions, including
(potentially) changing previous decisions.  People who wish to be
involved in the decisions of the IPv6 WG should subscribe to the IPv6
mailing list.

That said, though, we do understand that the IPv6 WG is making
decisions that have wide implications for all other areas of the IETF,
and it will continue to be the responsibility of the IPv6 chairs to
ensure that the IPv6 WG has wide-enough input and expertise to make
wise decisions in these cases.

In summary, we agree with one of the points in your appeal:

   - Offering option (C) in our opinion poll could reasonably be
     interpreted as re-opening the site-local deprecation decision.

But, we do not agree with the other point in your appeal:

   - We believe that the IPv6 mailing list is the appropriate forum in
     which to raise IPv6-related issues, including (as appropriate)
     re-opening previous decisions.

Although we agree with one portion of your appeal, the primary
action that we could have taken in response to this appeal
(withdrawing or clarifying option (C) in our opinion poll) is now
moot, as the WG has rejected option (C).

Please let us know if you feel that there are other actions that
we should be taking in response to your appeal.

While discussing this appeal with you, via e-mail and on the phone,
you also raised concerns about how little progress the IPv6 WG has
made towards the deprecation of site-local addresses since making 
the decision in April.  We share your concerns about this lack of
progress, and the current IPv6 WG chairs (Bob Hinden and Brian 
Haberman) are working to accelerate this activity. 

Leif, we appreciate your involvement in the IPv6 WG and we believe
that it is very important to continue to have applications experts
involved in our discussions and decisions.  We hope that you will
continue to participate in the IPv6 WG, that you will continue to 
speak out when you see problems, and that you will continue to help 
us by getting additional applications experts involved in the IPv6 
WG.

Bob Hinden and Margaret Wasserman
IPv6 WG chairs at the time of this appeal (5-Aug-03)

===

Original Appeal Text from Leif:

> Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 11:41:24 +0200
> From: Leif Johansson <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> CC: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> Subject: Appel due to management of the "site-local issue"
> 
> During the IETF meeting in San Francisco, rough consensus found that
> site-local was to be deprecated.  The wg was to investigate other
> approaches to the problems site-local claims to solve. It should be
> noted that the wg chairs explicitly before the meeting in San
> Francisco asked people not directly involved in ipv6 design (security,
> routing and applications people) to get involved with this issue. In
> my opinion from talking to a number of collegues and from the traffic
> on the mailing list those involved from other areas are no longer
> actively participating in the debate since they believe that
> site-locals has indeed been deprecated and that the ipv6 wg is
> continuing the important work on ipv6 in the IETF.
> 
> Currently the question about the future and status of site-locals is
> again beeing discussed in the wg despite the fact that consensus was
> achieved in SF and confirmed on the mailing-list. This is a sign that
> the wg chairs have not been able to follow the plan laid out at the SF
> meeting.
> 
> I respectfully ask that the ADs to confirm the decision made in San
> Francisco, later confirmed on the mailing list, and ask the wg chairs
> to please move on, working on real issues regarding ipv6 than beating
> this dead horse once again.
> 
>        Best Regards
>        Leif Johansson
>        Stockholm university
> 
===

Opinion Poll from Chairs (Subject of Appeal):

> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Moving forward on Site-Local and Local Addressing
> Cc: [email-masked]
> 
> [IPv6 working group chair hat on]
> 
> I think the working group has been making good progress on replacing
> site-local addresses and wanted to get feed back from the working
> group on how we should move forward.  This is not intended to directly
> relate to the ongoing appeal of the working groups decision to
> deprecate the usage site-local addresses, but to get feedback on how
> to proceed.  I think it is very important that we move forward on this
> issue and not rehash what has happened in the past.
> 
> We now have a combined local addressing requirements document
> <draft-hain-templin-ipv6-limitedrange-00.txt>, a specific alternative
> to site-local addresses draft
> <draft-hinden-ipv6-global-local-addr-02.txt> (accepted as a working
> group item at the Vienna IETF), and will soon have a draft describing
> why site-local addresses are being deprecated and doing the formal
> deprecation (authors identified and outline discussed at the Vienna
> IETF).  Note that all of these documents will proceed through the
> normal working group and IETF processes of last calls and review.
> 
> I think legitimate questions have been raised about how the working
> group should go about deprecating site-local addresses given their
> maturity in the current specifications and use in deployed products.
> Specifically should they be deprecated independently from having an
> alternative solution available, at the same time an alternative is
> available, or sometime after an alternative is available.  A forth
> alternative is to not replace site-local addresses in any form, but I
> think the working group has made it clear that this is not a
> reasonable alternative.
> 
> I would like to hear from the working group on how we should proceed.
> I think the choices are:
> 
> A) Deprecate Site-Local addresses independently from having an
> alternative solution available.  This would mean that the working
> group should treat the deprecation, and requirements and solution
> documents outlined above independently from each other.  If there was
> no consensus on an alternative a replacement would not happen.
> 
> B) Deprecate Site-Local addresses at the same time as a alternative
> solution is agreed to.  This would mean advancing both documents at
> the same time and making them include normative references to each
> other to insure that they were published at the same time.  This would
> result in the deprecation only happening if a consensus was reached on
> an alternative.
> 
> C) Deprecate Site-Local addresses after an alternative is defined,
> standardized, and in operational practice.  This would mean not
> advancing a deprecation document until there was operational evidence
> that the alternative was working and shown to be an improvement over
> Site-Local addresses.
> 
> Note: In the above choices "Deprecate Site-Local addresses" means
> publishing an RFC that does the formal deprecation.
> 
> Please respond to the list with your preference, or if there is an
> alternative approach that is an improvement from the ones I outlined.
> I hope that many of you will respond.
> 
> Thanks,
> Bob

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---

From: Leif Johansson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 11:51:53 +0200

[email-masked] wrote:
|
| Hi Leif,
|
| This message is a reply to the appeal that you filed on August 5, 2003
| regarding our management of the "site-local issue" (the full text
| of your message is included below).

I am happy with your reply to my appeal.

	Cheers Leif.