Subject: Documents need to conclude

From: Dennis Glatting <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 05:07:38 -0800 (PST)

Last night at the IESG's open mic at the Plenary I shared my concern
on document life cycle. I am writing to clarify my comments and offer
a suggestion I did not make at that time.

Yesterday, in the sprit of the law enforcement question in front of
us, a small group of people including myself held court in isolation
and passed judgment on some WG drafts. We found some drafts guilty of
a lack of entropy and some others a lack of momentum. Ladies and
gentlemen you have heard comments like this one many times before:
work items need a time limit. The IESG's response was the same you
have heard many time before also: we're an organization of volunteers
and it is unfair to make such demands.

I agree with the IESG and that it is a difficult problem. However, we
have two related issues before us. The first is we have to figure out
how to scale the IETF. The second is documents that do not conclude in
reasonable time tend to defocus WGs. More specifically, the longer a
WG persists the more items that are put in front of the WG with the
result of spreading limited energies.

For every case I can put before you of documents that need closure I
can put before you documents that have excelled from prolonged
exposure. The IPsec documents are great examples of documents that
have excelled. Therefore, I offer to you this rule to consider:

	Once something is committed to paper in a WG a timer 
	starts. The document has 24 months (6 IETF sessions) 
	to either be sent to the IESG for advancement or 
	with WG consensus the Chair petitions the AD for a 
	two session extension, which can be extended in the 
	same manner again. Otherwise the document is
	withdrawn.

I believe this rule to add something the IETF sorely needs but is
unfair to impose: a little bit of project management. It's advantage
is very low overhead.

Comments?

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From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 10:05:55 -0500

>         same manner again. Otherwise the document is

...and then someone else rewrites the document and resubmits it.  If
they're straightforward about it, it's obviously the same document, and
the IESG has to decide whether to apply the rule.  If they change it
enough to be a different document, then they probably insert their own
biases, and the WG has to argue it out again.  No net gain.

--
/================================================================\
|John Stracke    | http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.  |
|Chief Scientist |===============================================|
|eCal Corp.      |Both candidates are better than a megalomaniac |
[email-masked]|mutant lab mouse bent on world domination...but|
|                |it's pretty close.                             |
\================================================================/

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From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 10:05:55 -0500

---

From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 10:13:56 -0500

Dennis Glatting wrote:
>.....

Vendors need to make sure the protocols they help develop work.
In some areas the protocols would be simple to implement if they did not
have
to interoperate. And there is a very real need for vendors to ship
products
in that 2 year window.  This means that sometimes vendors do not have
the time
to move as fast as as the IETF could move. This can be frustrating if
your
company can move faster.

A solution is to write drafts yourself and submit them to the WGs, then
take the
input from the WG and write another. I have seen many talk of this
issue. I have
seen fewer propose text or some kind of draft.

In IMPP (one of the WGs complained about), the input was that it has
been 2 years.
Well IMPP has not existed for 2 years. That persons frustration was
including the
time it took to move those ideas into becoming a WG. Then those pioneers
who have known each other for the last 2 years (or more) assembling the
WG
have an idea of what they want. When the WG forms they are ready to go
and
get it done - if it were not for the rest of us with our own ideas. This
is part of the review process.

Meetings of the WGs outside of the 3 general meetings are discouraged.
Slowing
the progress to what can be done to 2-3 hours every 4 months for the
face to
face communications. Email is powerful, it can often be an endless
debate that
the chair NEEDS to resolve.The chairs I suspect are afraid that they
will
be accused of moving the WG direction for their own benefit. I would
hope that
we have faith in our process AND our chairs, many do not seem to have
that faith.

I feel that deadlines will work if the chairs can whip the process into
progress.
In IMPP there was a loud request from the attendees for the chairs to
start
cracking the whip.

-Doug
[email-masked]

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From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 10:13:56 -0500

-Doug
[email-masked]

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From: Dennis Glatting <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 15:03:52 -0800 (PST)

On Thu, 11 Nov 1999, John Stracke wrote:

> ...and then someone else rewrites the document and resubmits it.  
> If they're straightforward about it, it's obviously the same
> document, and the IESG has to decide whether to apply the rule.  
> If they change it enough to be a different document, then they
> probably insert their own biases, and the WG has to argue it out
> again.  No net gain.
> 

It wasn't my goal to write a statement that could not be subverted.
The goal is everyone appropriate is engaged in the decision to extend
the life of a document. 

-dpg

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From: Dennis Glatting <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 15:03:52 -0800 (PST)

-dpg