--On Tuesday, 08 April, 2008 14:25 -0700 Fred Baker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Apr 8, 2008, at 1:14 PM, Leslie Daigle wrote: >> Giving the Trust a chair is at least a step towards >> acknowledging it as a separate organization (beyond >> instrument), and one could then examine whether the IAOC >> members are, in fact, the right people to populate it (for >> example). It certainly opens the doors to mission creep. > > Russ asked IAOC members to contribute. OK, here I am. > > It actually is a separate organization. It has separate > meetings, separate minutes, and a separate membership - all > trustees are IAOC members, and one certainly hopes that all > IAOC members will agree to sign the form that makes them > trustees, but that is not a requirement of IAOC membership. > Specifically the chair of the trustees is *not* identified > as the chair of the IAOC in the current procedures or in the > trust - rather, meetings are convened by any trustee who > happens to be present. > > Is that a problem? Well, it's not a big one, but it does seem > odd. > > There are two logical ways to fix this. One is to identify the > set of trustees with the IAOC - same committee, same chair, > same meetings, same minutes. The other is to recognize the > difference and decide that it's OK - the chair of the > trustees might be the same as the chair of the IAOC but > doesn't have to be, but leave the meetings, minutes, and > committee separate as they are now. We chose the second, > being the least change, and are suggesting it to the IETF > community. Fred, I think I have to agree with where I think Leslie is headed here. Either the Trustees really are the IAOC members, with the separation merely being a formality required by the way the Trust was set up, or the Trust is a separate entity in fact as well as in legal theory. That "same entity, plus or minus official roles and legalism" model is your first "logical way" above and what I think the IETF thought it was agreeing to. If it is the second, then we should be having a discussion about whether the IETF wants a separate cast of characters, rather than making IAOC members automagically Trustees. More specifically, I may be missing something, but I can see only the following cases: (i) The workload of the Trust and IAOC combined has turned out to be larger than expected and has gotten too high. That is what I think Russ's note implies when he says "...faced with more work than usual. The IPR WG has placed a significant task on the IETF Trust. Yet, all of the usual IAOC activities need to go forward on the usual schedule...". If there aren't enough available cycles, then taking one of the same people and designating him or her as "Trust Chair" won't help with anything but (maybe) better knowledge about what is falling through the cracks. There still won't be enough cycles because no cycles have been added. If this is the problem, then we ought to be looking at a proposal to constitute the Trustees in some other way so as to bring in different people and more cycles, not a proposal to just pass some more titles around. (ii) There are enough cycles, but there is an organizational / tracking problem. Here I think I agree with Harald. If the problem is simply tracking, that is a secretarial task. Maybe the secretariat can do it. Maybe the Trust needs an Exec Director similar to the long-time IAB role of the same name. Note that either of those approaches would presumably add cycles and that the potential for conflict of interest if the Secretariat gets involved with managing the IAOC presumably does not exist with the Trust. But creating a Trust Chair who can track and advocate for getting work done on Trust issues while you also have a IAOC Chair who tracks and advocates for getting work done --done by exactly the same people-- on IAOC issues... well, I do not yet understand why that would be helpful. (iii) While functions differ, the two organizations are really the same. Nonetheless, there is a desire to create a new function and title here for reasons I, at least, still don't understand. For example, to the extent to which the Trust is separate from the IAOC, perhaps there is a need for a coordination role and that might require the two Chairs to sit down regularly and prioritize the work. But, if that is the plan, then the two Chairs take on real authority, which we have been assured that neither really has. So this case confuses me. john _______________________________________________ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf