IETF Administrative Support Activity 2.0: Update to the Process for Selection
of Trustees for the IETF Trust
Ericsson
Kauniainen
02700
Finland
jari.arkko@piuha.net
General
IASA2
IETF administration
intellectual property
leadership selection
IASA
This document captures the rationale for the
changes introduced in RFC 8714, "Update to the Process for Selection of
Trustees for the IETF Trust".
At the time RFC 8714 was published, the changes to the IETF
Administrative Support Activity, Version 2.0 (IASA 2.0) had an impact on the IETF
Trust because members of the IETF Administrative Oversight
Committee (IAOC), which was being phased out, had served as
Trustees of the IETF Trust. This document provides
background on the past IETF Trust arrangements, explains the
effect of the rules in the founding documents during the
transition to the new arrangement, and provides a rationale for
the update.
Introduction
This document captures the rationale for the
changes introduced in .
At the time was
published, the changes to the IETF Administrative Support Activity,
Version 2.0 (IASA 2.0) had an impact on the IETF Trust . This
is because members of the IETF Administrative
Oversight Committee (IAOC), which was being phased out, had
served as Trustees of the IETF Trust. A minimal change
regarding the selection of the Trustees is implemented by .
This companion memo provides some background on the details
of the past IETF Trust arrangements, explains the effect of
the rules in the founding documents during the transition to the new
arrangement, and provides a rationale for the update.
Background
The purpose of the IETF Trust is to acquire, hold, maintain,
and license certain existing and future intellectual property
and other property used in connection with the administration of
the IETF . The intellectual property is,
for instance, rights that the IETF contributors grant for text
in RFCs and Internet-Drafts. The IETF Trust also manages
trademarks such as "IETF" and domain names such as
"ietf.org". The IETF Trust is also serving the broader Internet
community by holding domains and trademarks associated with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) .
The IETF Trust is a legal entity, registered in the
Commonwealth of Virginia .
Previously, the members of the IAOC also served as ex officio
Trustees of the IETF Trust. The founding documents specify
persons eligible to become Trustees as having to be then-current
members of the IAOC . The documents
also specify that if for any reason there are fewer than three
individuals serving as Trustees, then the Internet Engineering
Steering Group (IESG), or the IESG's successor as the leadership
of the IETF, shall appoint one or more individuals to serve in a
temporary capacity as Trustee(s) until eligible persons can be found.
In the previous system, there were eight voting members of the IAOC. Two were
named by the IETF Nominating Committee (NomCom), one by the Internet
Engineering Steering Group (IESG), one by the Internet Architecture Board
(IAB), and one by the Internet Society (ISOC) Board of Trustees. There were
three ex officio members via their roles as IETF Chair, ISOC CEO, and IAB
Chair. In addition, the IETF Administrative Director (IAD) was a non-voting
IAOC member who also served as one of the Trustees.
General Approach
There were two basic approaches to resolving the issue with
the Trustees once the IAOC ceased to exist. One approach would be to
merge all IETF Trust functions in the new IASA structure and
under the new legal entity. However, this memo advocates a second
approach where the IETF Trust is kept independent.
The rationale for advocating the second approach is, in part,
to minimize changes to the IETF Trust while the IETF's
administrative structure is undergoing major change. In
addition, the IETF Trust and other administrative IETF processes
are quite different. While very important, the IETF Trust is a
low-activity entity where changes are minimal and gradual, and
there are no pressing issues.
Changing the Way Trustees Are Selected
When the Trustees were serving on both the IETF Trust and the
IAOC, many of the requirements for naming a particular group of
people were driven by the IAOC's requirements. For the IETF
Trust in the new model, some of those arrangements were
rethought, both in terms of the number and source of the
Trustees, as well as the desired qualifications and length of
terms.
Several options were possible, of course.
A newly designed selection process could have been devised, but in this
document we argue for limited change based largely on the fact that a) the IETF
Trust arrangements worked generally well, b) the expected time commitment
is expected to be modest, and c) the assets need very careful management.
As a result, a smaller group of Trustees appeared sufficient.
In addition, the terms set for the
Trustees selected from the IETF community could be longer than
the two-year period typical of other IETF bodies.
One could have continued the practice of having the chairs and CEOs
from the IETF, IAB, and Internet Society be Trustees as well, but
this may not be necessary. In general, the tasks of the IETF
Trust are well defined, and while there is a need for
coordination, it does not need to be at the level of chairs or
CEOs.
Given all this, one approach was to have Trustees appointed
by the NomCom, the IESG, and the ISOC Board of Trustees. (One might also
have considered the IETF Administration LLC legal entity instead
of the Internet Society for this role, but the Internet Society
is perhaps more suitable for the role given their focus on the
broad use of the IETF Trust assets and not merely administrative
aspects.)
If the same principles used for previous appointments continued to be
used, then appointments performed by the NomCom would need to be
confirmed by another entity. This could be, for instance, either the
IESG or the IAB. The IESG had previously been the confirming body for
the IAOC, so it has been retained in that role for the Trustees.
Transition
When the new entity for the IETF Administration LLC was set up,
the IAOC was expected to be discontinued soon
thereafter. Fortunately, there was no pressing need to change
all the components of the IAOC and its dependent organizations
at the same time. As discussed in , the IESG holds the ability to continue
to name Trustees. Once the updated procedures were in place,
the IETF Trust had its management nominated in the usual manner,
and the IESG's exception process was no longer needed.
Security Considerations
This memo has no security implications for the Internet.
IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
References
Normative References
Informative References
Update to the Process for Selection of Trustees for the
IETF Trust
Founding Documents
IETF Trust
Structure of the IETF Administrative Support Activity,
Version 2.0
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank other members of the earlier
IASA 2.0 design team: , ,
, , and
. The author would
also like to thank , , ,
, , and
for interesting
discussions in this problem space, and ,
, ,
, ,
and for careful review.