Subject: RE:

From: Dan Zigmond <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 11:03:08 -0700

At the risk of making an obvious point, some of the people expressing their
support of this submission don't subscribe to the IETF discussion list.
They are just trying to do what they think the IESG asked them to do, which
is to publicly state their "affirmative support".  They may not know what
technical objections have been made on the list.  All they are stating is
that it is their feeling that the specification would be a useful
Informational RFC.  Again, the IESG specifically asked for demonstrations of
"public support" and that's what they are getting.

Perhaps your main point is that copying [email-masked] is a waste of time
with such messages, and perhaps you are right.  On the other hand, the IESG
did say to send comments to either this list of [email-masked], without
giving any guidance of how someone might choose between the two.  So, again,
one can hardly blame the people sending these messages for trying their best
to follow IESG instructions.

As I've said before, I am the first to admit that the draft has problems.  I
have tried to point out those problems in the text, and welcome all the
suggestions of how to do a better job documenting the short-comings and/or
pointing to avenues for future, better solutions.  If the fact that many in
the interactive television industry are using the draft roughly as it stands
is irrelevant, then the IESG was wrong to suggest in the last call that this
would be one of the deciding factors in their recommendation to the RFC
Editor.

	Dan

---------------------------------------------------
Dan Zigmond
Senior Manager, Broadcast Applications
WebTV Networks, Inc.
[email-masked]
---------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Resnick [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, August 20, 1999 10:50 AM
To: Dan Zigmond
Cc: 'Keith Moore'; [email-masked]'; [email-masked]'
Subject: RE:

On 8/20/99 at 8:55 AM -0700, Dan Zigmond wrote:

>...the messages we've seen seem to be reasonable demonstrations of support.

No, this is what you are missing, Dan. The first message of the form 
"Organization X supports this I-D" may have been reasonable. It 
doesn't say much in that there is no technical justification for the 
support, but more importantly it doesn't give anyone any idea how to 
weight that support. If I send in a simple message that says "I do 
not support this I-D", how will the IESG weigh those two messages 
against eachother? A reasonable way would be for Keith to say, "Well, 
I know Pete has been doing IETF work for a few years and is 
technically competent; he might have good reasons if he objects. And 
I have some unknown VP or CTO from an organization claiming what 
appears to be a public position for that organization; that sounds 
like marketing crap. I'll give Pete more credence, or at least make 
the two equal."

Furthermore, after some technical objections were publicly stated on 
this list, additional messages of support *on this list* with no 
response to those objections are easily dismissed by the IESG: If, 
after all of these objections, you don't even have the common sense 
to say, "I support it even given the objections because I think it 
documents a widespread practice" or some such thing, it deems your 
claim of support very suspect indeed.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick <mailto:[email-masked]>
Eudora Engineering - QUALCOMM Incorporated
Ph: (217)337-6377 or (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 20:54:50 +0100 (BST)

> support of this submission don't subscribe to the IETF discussion list.

and don't know how to find it either - after being asked, I pointed
the Chief Technologist originating the most recent support message at
http://www.ietf.org/ so he could find out how to subscribe himself.
Judge the support messages in light of that.

> On the other hand, the IESG
> giving any guidance of how someone might choose between the two. 

They're going to have to insert 'substantive considered comments with
a focus on technical, implementation or operational considerations' or
somesuch in there in future, to discourage this 'me, too!' stuff.

Support comes from community consensus (or, at least, apathy). This
draft has shown a distinct lack of either of those.

The IESG members are all subscribed to the ietf list, with good
reason.

L.

this could only happen in August; vacation silly season.

<[email-masked]>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 20:54:50 +0100 (BST)

L.