Subject: RE: Uneccesary slowness.

From: "Hollenbeck, Scott" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 07:23:03 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of [email-masked]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 4:34 PM
> To: Dave Crocker
> Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]; Dave Crocker; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Uneccesary slowness.

[snip]

> Second, in the apps area at least, we have in fact seen a 
> dramatic reduction
> of the number of WGs. I just checked, and when I left the IESG there 
> were 25 apps area groups. This number is now down to 14. And 
> while there
> are obviously lots of other factors, close to a factor of 2 
> reduction in the
> number of groups should have had some effect. Have you noticed any?

Ted and I have spent a lot of timing trying to assist working groups
that have been close to completing their work but have been unable to
finish for one reason or another.  We've had some success in getting
work completed, but the amount of time we've spent doing clean-up work
has meant that we haven't been able to devote much time to strategic
thinking.  We're hoping that one impact of the reduction will be that
we'll have more time to start looking forward.

-Scott-

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From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 14:01:08 +0200

>we'll have more time to start looking forward.

 From the two I participate to, I would suggest there is a more complex 
problem. When a WG is started it is at the initiative of a small group. 
Innovation cannot be shared by several persons without narrowing its 
perspective. Even if the matter is broad, even if the IESG pays attention 
to the charter to enlarge it, even if IAB provide guidance, the vision of 
these individuals will prevail. Sometimes there is also the problem 
identified by IAB's RFC 3869 about the commercial funding of R&D and the 
need of more global vision and independent/larger funding by Govs.

But the matter is still more worrying, because the IETF is in fact the 
addition of people interested in one or several WG and a new idea will 
rarely excite people pursuing others. This means that recuitment is through 
the WG.

1. the less WGs the less recuitment
2. the more participants, the least knowledge/interest in Internet 
architecture in the WG - and competence in the WG matters out of the scope 
or of the agenda they pursue.
3. the more WGs, the more resulting confusion
4. the more confusion, the least interest from non-IETF specialists to join 
the WG and the IETF.

I gave a few thinking about this and I came to the conclusion that the best 
to get some real quality work was to slightly modify the working method to 
keep open participation but to work on a filtered basis, stopping chatting 
where the number of people prevails on the number of ideas. This can only 
be organised outside of the IETF and result in external submissions. The 
work is obviously not negligible, but I think it is necessary. Now the 
problem is to see specialized TFs to emerge and to keep them coordinated 
with the IETF. This can result in some slight modification of the Internet 
standard process, formally including into the review these specialised TF. 
IMHO rather than slowing the process, it could speed it up, because 
parallel review by a larger number of specialised reviewevers/comments 
periods we can rely on.

jfc