Subject: Re: raising the bar on I-D's

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 22:42:37 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>

> ...
> Ah, I misunderstood then. Yes, I *did* find an IESG sponsor for each 
> of them, and that seems like a fine bar to raise. However, I'm 
> assuming you mean is a quick "this isn't utter junk" review by 
> someone in the IETF (IESG, IAB, etc.). Anything more than that should 
> only be part of the RFC publication review.

I would not want to say what criteria the sponsor should use.  Some
documents would need more due diligence than others.  I think simply naming
the IESG member, etc. that is the sponsor would be sufficient to ensure
that the sponsor would generally do the right thing, from a 2 second skim
of the abstract to implementing the protocol.  You must trust people to
do their jobs, and the idea is not to prevent all bad I-D's, but to throw
up a quick coffer dam in front of the flood of wonderful ideas.

> >How do you suggest that "vigilance" be implemented?  The intent of 
> >my proposal is to
>
> I think you trimmed something accidentally here.

Yes, I meant to say that I'm only try to make that "vigilance" official,
so disappointed industry consortia cannot cry foul when their latest idea
and public statements of support are not met with overwhelming enthusiasm.

> >...if you look at current I-D's, you'll see that the IETF is trying 
> >very hard to prove Gresham's Law applies to network standards as 
> >well as coinage.
>
> I'm not convinced. Certainly the number of I-D's doesn't impact WG's 
> abilities to get work done. It may negatively impact the ability to 
> get good individual submissions through, but with enough of the sort 
> of vigilance we've seen on this one, it will only be an issue of it 
> taking longer to get those out as against not getting them done at 
> all.

Contrary to IETF dogma, the IETF is more of a political than a technical
institution.  Politics is always paramount when more than 2 people are
involved.  Bad ideas, poor documents, go-ers, and corporate attention not
only steal valuable enerty from good ideas and  documents, but also drive
away the good ideas and those who work hard enough to have them.
Or to put it another way, what are the differences among the IETF or DDN
community, ANSI, IEEE, and OSI or ITU in 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005?

] From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>

] ...
] > Why would an AD willing to sponsor a BOF not also be willing to sponsor
] > the I-D that leads to or comes out of the BOF?
]
] Put that way, it seems unlikely.  But generally the ADs want to see a Draft
] published and attracting attention before sponsoring a BOF, right? (I'm not
]objecting to this, mind you.) If I have to get an AD to sponsor my Draft to get
] it published, and he has 50 other Drafts clamoring for his attention (not
] unlikely), then he's going to have a hard time finding the time to read mine.
]Better to let all Drafts be published and let the community decide which ones to
] talk about; that offloads work from the AD and lets the system scale better.

If there are 50 other drafts that need the attention of each of the
interested AD and WG chairs, then things are very badly broken and
emergency actions are needed to reduce the number of documents to what a
real committee can handle.  I assume that's why the IEEE has "PAR's", to
limit the number of wonderful new ideas that corporations would like
pubished as official IEEE standards....not that the IEEE mechanisms work
perfectly (recall 100VG-AnyLAN).

} From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>

} > Why would an AD willing to sponsor a BOF not also be willing to sponsor
} > the I-D that leads to or comes out of the BOF?
}
} because they did not support the outcome, did not feel it had consensus, ...
}
} if the outcome of a bof was known beforehand, there would be no need to have
} it.

I can't tell if that is an objection to the idea.
I-D's currently do not need any consensus for publication.  
If no AD, WG chair, IAB or IESG member will sponsor the document that
is the seed of a BOF, why waste time on the BOF?
Or on the document itself regardless of whether there is or is not a BOF?

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 22:42:37 -0600 (MDT)

] ...