Subject: Re: [yam] Discussion of Two Track Ramifications for YAM

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:44:29 -0400

(sorry -- wrong address used)

--On Tuesday, August 10, 2010 00:01 -0400 Tony Hansen
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> As indicated in my previous message with notes from
> Maastricht, the ramifications of Russ Housley's "two track"
> proposal were discussed there. See the slides for a summary of
> the issues at
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/78/materials.html#wg-yam.
> 
> At the end of the meeting, three questions were discussed:
> 
>      1) should the YAM working group continue working at its
> current rate on its current doc set?
>      2) should the YAM working group "hit the pause button"?
>      3) should the YAM working group shut down?
> 
> Absolutely no one supported the last item, #3. However, the
> room was fairly evenly split between support for both #1 and
> #2.
> 
> Please respond to this message with an indication of your
> support for either #1 (working apace) or #2 (pausing), as well
> as why.
> 
> If you support #2 (pausing), please also discuss how long of a
> pause you feel is appropriate and why.

I support #2 (pausing) because:

(1) The main motivation for the YAM work was advancement of an
interrelated collection of documents to Full Standard.  If the
eliminate of Full Standard (collapsing its name onto Draft
Standard) eliminates the need to advance the documents in a
coordinated way, we should be making document-by-document
decisions about priorities, timing, and the tradeoff between
document revisions and errata pages.

(2) If we are going to do revisions-in-place (Draft called Full
to Draft called Full), than many of the discussions and
assumptions that have gone into the pre-eval documents become
questionable and should be reviewed.  It is not clear that
either the WG or the IESG have the energy for such a review.
I've gathered that the need to do those reviews are part of what
motivated the "two track" discussion and decision on the IESG's
part.  And, if we have to go back to "present document to the
IESG and risk surprises and a game of 'gotcha, we are imposing
additional requirements at Last Call'" as in the past, it is
questionable as to whether it is worth the energy to move
forward.

(3) Certainly it may be worth revising some of the documents
that are on the YAM agenda even if "Full Standard" is no longer
a reason.  But that would should then be done after considering
tradeoffs with other work.  And we should consider whether
similar pre-evaluation arrangements are still in order and, if
so, discuss with the IESG, de novo, whether they are willing to
work with those arrangements.

Put differently, we need to remember why the effort that became
YAM was started.  If the IESG decides to eliminate the
motivation, we need to review whether that effort still makes
sense.

As far as "how long" is concerned, I think we stay paused until 

	(i) The IESG decides to adopt this Two Track plan or
	some other one.
	
	(ii) Either the IESG explicitly abandons the Two Track
	plan or the I-D expires.

In the first case, our first un-pausing action should be a
review of what we want to do given the new facts.  In the
second, we go back to work.

In principle, if authors get motivated, nothing prevents posting
of drafts of revised documents or even new pre-eval documents
even while we are paused.  As I see it, the effects of a pause
is that all benchmark dates are suspended and authors and
editors are not going to get hassled for the absence of new
I-Ds. 

   john