Subject: [yam] whither YAM?

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:53:49 -0500

Folks, the time has come to start deciding what to do with the YAM 
working group. I've been discussing this with my co-chair and our AD, 
and I see several ways forward:

     1) stay on hold -- keep the group in hiatus for another X months
         a) we would need to decide on what X is

     2) restart work as originally chartered. This means going back and
         picking up where we left off on 5321bis, 5322bis and 4409bis.

     3) shut down

     4) recharter (see below)

There are several ways we could recharter.

     A) We could eliminate or modify the "process experiment" we've been
	using (where we publish an I-D that indicates what needs to
	change, get IESG approval, and *then* proceed with revising the
	RFC).

     B) We could review the documents that were in the original YAM
	charter. For any that we feel need to be revved no matter what
	(for example, 3798 MDN (one of my documents) is in this list),
	we can proceed with revising them.

     C) We start taking a look at the Proposed Standard mail-related
	standards and see what they need to moved forward to the next
	status.

     D) Do something else.

     E) Any combination of the above.

Please provide your input. We have exactly one month to come to a 
consensus, after which it will be too late to schedule a meeting in 
Prague (should we decide we need one).

         Tony Hansen
         YAM co-chair

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:31:48 -0500

Tony,

I'd rather make this reappraisal after we see the composition of
the IESG that should be seated in Prague.  It seems to me that
the key question is whether the IESG is going to be willing to
process the documents as originally intended and that might give
us a clue.  Or not, but certainly we will not have less
information.

In theory, we should have that information in well under a
month.  If we do not, I think I'd suggest going ahead and asking
for a meeting slot on the theory that meetings are much more
easily cancelled (should that be necessary) than scheduled.

I certainly wouldn't object to modifying the charter to include
your item C.  Finding out whether the IESG would be willing to
approve a revised charter that included them but also included
the preapproval model for documents that might go from
Draft->Full would be another way to get some information.

   john

--On Thursday, January 13, 2011 13:53 -0500 Tony Hansen
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Folks, the time has come to start deciding what to do with the
> YAM working group. I've been discussing this with my co-chair
> and our AD, and I see several ways forward:
> 
> Please provide your input. We have exactly one month to come
> to a consensus, after which it will be too late to schedule a
> meeting in Prague (should we decide we need one).
> 
>          Tony Hansen
>          YAM co-chair
> _______________________________________________
> yam mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/yam

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:49:26 -0800

At 10:53 13-01-11, Tony Hansen wrote:
>working group. I've been discussing this with my co-chair and our 
>AD, and I see several ways forward:
>

Pete proposed at IETF78 that the working group could consider 
suspending its activities until it knows whether 
draft-housley-two-maturity-levels will go through.

It was mentioned that there was a view within the IESG that moving 
documents to Full Standard was pointless.  It was also mentioned that 
IESG finds the pre-evaluation documents too painful.

There are two issues here:

  (i)  Whether the IESG considers it worthwhile to move documents along the
       Standards Track

  (ii) Whether the procedure adopted by the Working Group to do the work
       is optimal

I don't recall seeing a WG in hiatus before.  Some WGs drag their 
feet to complete the work.  That can be viewed as a pause 
button.  And it buys the WG the time it needs to see the composition 
of the IESG that should be seated in Prague.  If the decision is 
delayed by a month, the WG may be in a better position to assess the 
first issue.

It is not within IETF practices to see mild discussions in a WG 
working on mail related specifications.  Maybe the procedure adopted 
by the WG has something to do with that.

>    D) Do something else.

At IETF76, the following proposal was made:

   "In the event all documents are removed from the WG charter, the WG will
    write a narrowly drawn update to RFC 2026 that eliminates the third level
    of standard; this update document is forbidden from making other changes
    in the standards process."

That might require a recharter as the existing charter does not cover this.

I would like to point out that this WG has a history of being asked 
whether to recharter or disband.  There seems to be caused by 
unhappiness with the IESG.  A charter defines the work a WG will do 
and how it will do it.  If following the charter is so difficult, 
there must be a problem with the charter.

I suggest that the WG asks for a recharter by:

  (i)  Bringing up the existing charter with minor changes to the IETF
       mailing list for discussion and see whether the IETF Community
       supports what is in the charter

  (ii) Sending the charter to the (new) IESG for approval or discussing
       a different course of action after reviewing the input from the
       previous step.

Regards,
-sm