Subject: Re: Appeal to the IAB on the site-local issue

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 10:56:33 -0400

- I don't see anything in our documented processes that requires a 
  greater degree of consensus to change an existing specification.
  Rather I see an expectation built into our process that undesirable 
  or unworkable features will be removed as a standard progresses from
  proposed to draft to full standard.

- I can understand a belief that 3/4 majority is on the rough edge of rough
  consensus.  But even assuming that rough consensus requires a greater
  plurality, there was certainly a sufficient demonstration of opinion
  that any revision to existing specifications that did include site local
  was unlikely to gain consensus and that trying to fix site-local was
  not a useful expenditure of the WG's energy.  And there was also growing
  evidence that we had not found a workable way to use site local, which would
  by itself be sufficient to bar site-local from advancing in grade along 
  with the rest of IPv6.  So even accepting that there was something less than
  consensus in the WG's decision, in some sense it's a moot point.  Site-local 
  was a dead end anyway, both politically and technically.

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From: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 10:16:42 -0400 (EDT)

IAB,

Please consider this input for the IAB discussion on Tony's appeal of the
site local decision.  This should not be considered a separate appeal.
(Which I would think would have to start at the beginning with the working
group chairs.)

I do not have an opinion on the particulars of Tony's appeal since I was
not at the meeting in question and only followed the discussion on the
mailing list.  Nor is this an opinion based on the technical question under
discussion.  (Although I think some of the cures proposed to the site-local
disease are quite a bit worse than the disease itself.)

I would like to reiterate the concern I expressed on the mailing list back
in July - I think there may been a violation of the IETF consensus process 
in this case.

It is my opinion that there is a difference between a working group
deciding to adopt a technology and a working group deciding to delete a
technology from an existing IETF specification.  It is my opinion that the
second case should require a stronger demonstration of consensus to
change since the decision effects existing implementations, documentation,
text books etc.

But even without any need to show any extra level of consensus I did not
see that even a minimal level of rough consensus was demonstrated to remove
site local addresses.

The claim was made on the list that there was not consensus to keep site
local addresses, I think that is the wrong question to ask - the proposal
was to change a specification after its publication there should have been
a rough consensus to remove the feature.

I did not see rough consensus to do so based on my monitoring the list.

Scott

(this is the letter I sent back in July on the topic)