[Note: This message is being sent in my role as an IPv6 WG chair. I have already recused myself from IESG consideration of Tony Hain's appeal and will not participate in this discussion as an Internet AD.]
Hi Robert,
I'd like to respond to a few of the things that you mentioned in your message:
At 09:23 PM 8/1/2003 +0700, Robert Elz wrote:
First, RFC2418 (aka BCP 25) (WG procedures) requires...
For coordinated, structured WG interactions, the Chair(s) MUST publish a draft agenda well in advance of the actual session.
The agenda of the March 2003 ipv6 WG meeting was sent to the mailing list on March 14. The WG meetings were on March 17 & 20. "Well in advance". Hmmm...
An initial draft agenda, which did list the local addressing topic, was sent to the mailing list on March 3rd. The final agenda was posted on March 14th.
Then
The minutes shall be submitted in printable ASCII text for publication in the IETF Proceedings, and for posting in the IETF Directories and are to be sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
As best I can tell, no minutes have been submitted for that meeting (even though the next meeting has already been completed). Draft minutes were sent to the mailing list (March 28), but nothing further seems to have been done. They certainly don't appear in the normal IETF places for WG meeting minutes (as for example, the November 2002 minutes do).
Due to a clerical error on our part, the minutes were not submitted to the secretariat on time. However, they were sent to the mailing list (on March 28th, as you indicate) and there were no comments indicating errors or omissions.
So, everyone on the mailing list has had access to the minutes since March 28th (less than two weeks after the meeting).
Although the minutes were submitted to the secretariat late, they were submitted. We are not sure why they have not been posted to the proceedings web page. This is currently being investigated.
Then, again from rfc2418:
In determining the balance, the WG must ensure that its process does not serve to exclude contribution by email-only participants. Decisions reached during a face-to-face meeting about topics or issues which have not been discussed on the mailing list, or are significantly different from previously arrived mailing list consensus MUST be reviewed on the mailing list.
First from that note, "reviewed" on the mailing list, not "continued there".
RFC2418 also says:
In the case where a consensus which has been reached during a face-to-face meeting is being verified on a mailing list the people who were in the meeting and expressed agreement must be taken into account. If there were 100 people in a meeting and only a few people on the mailing list disagree with the consensus of the meeting then the consensus should be seen as being verified.
So, RFC 2418 does not indicate that the entire consensus call should be re-done on the mailing list. In fact, it explicitly states that the number of people involved in the face-to-face consensus "must be taken into account" in the final determination.
Before we get to that though, there's the issue of whether the "deprecate site local" was a new issue, or one that had been dragging along forever.
The concept of deprecating site-local addressing had been under discussion for some time. In particular, removing site-local addresses from the architecture was discussed as an option at the IPv6 WG meeting in Atlanta in November 2002, and proposed as an alternative in an I-D that I published in December 2002. So, this was certainly not a new topic of discussion for anyone who had been following the IPv6 WG since November 2002.
In Atlanta, there was consensus in the WG to pursue a course of action that involved limiting the use of site-local addressing in some way. This course was pursued for a few months, with a few different proposals circulated for how to limit the use of site-local addressing. Bob and I presented a summary/comparison of these proposals in SF, and we honestly believed that the WG would choose between those proposals.
To our surprise, however, the consensus of those attending the meeting in San Francisco was that all of the proposals to limit the use of site-locals still had substantial problems. So, we reached consensus to move in the direction of deprecating site-local unicast addressing, and that is the course that we are pursuing now.
This email asks those that were NOT present at the Thursday IPv6 meeting in SF to express their opinions on a question that was asked of the room. If you expressed an opinion on this issue in SF you can skip this message; in any case you MUST NOT respond to this query.
That is, no-one was permitted to have had a change of mind.
This is incorrect. One person did publicly change his mind (David Borman, in a message sent to the list on April 4th), and this was publicly acknowledged and supported in mail sent by me on April 5th. No one else indicated a desire to change his/her mind.
One may speculate as to why this "unusual" approach was taken, and perhaps reach the conclusion that having achieved a large majority (reported in the draft minutes as 102 to 20) in favour of the "deprecate site local" decision, they didn't want to risk any of that majority being dropped away, or any of the people who supported it, not really being on the ipv6 list, and so not normally a part of the working group or its decision making process (which isn't to say anyone should be excluded, anyone can join the list, and if, knowing the issue was to be discussed there, they had a strong opinion upon it, anyone could have joined the list to express that opinion).
Please see the RFC 2418 text quoted above. RFC 2418 _requires_ that the number of people who reached consensus in the meeting room must be taken into account when the consensus is reviewed on the list.
Further, even that assumes that taking votes is the way the IETF operates. That would not often be regarded as a normal way to do things. Normally, WGs take "straw polls" to determine whether just about everyone agrees with a point, or disagrees, or whether there's a serious split. Here, had this been regarded as a straw poll, then even with 155 to 56 numbers, "serious split" and "no consensus" would have been the only reasonable result.
It is strange that you argue both that:
(1) Consensus is not determined by voting or numbers.
-AND-
(2) These numbers aren't good enough to constitute consensus.
The straw poll results were not the only thing that the WG chairs considered in determining WG consensus on this issue, We considered the hundreds of e-mail messages that had been generated on the IPv6 mailing list regarding this subject over several months, we considered the comments and discussion on this topic from the face-to-face IPv6 WG meeting, and we also considered the comments that people made regarding why they indicated YES or NO in response to our straw poll.
Based on all of this input, we determined that (in our best judgement) there was a consensus of the IPv6 WG to pursue a specific course of action. This course of action involves doing multiple things in parallel that will eventually result in deprecating site-local unicast addressing and replacing it with a non-ambiguous local addressing scheme (not necessarily in that order). We believe that we correctly determined the consensus of the WG, because very few people have objected to our consensus statement since it was published on April 9th. Furthermore, the WG seems to be productively engaged in carrying out the action plan that we indicated in our consensus e-mail.
I won't argue that we followed every process in RFC 2418 to perfection, and we should strive to do better in the future, especially regarding the timeliness of our agenda and minutes.
But, I do not believe that our minor process violations materially affected the ability of anyone who was involved in the IPv6 WG in March and April of 2003 (via email and/or in-person) to participate in this discussion, understand what was going on, or voice his/her opinion on this issue. And, I believe that we took all of those opinions, regardless of how they were voiced, into consideration as part of our consensus determination.
This may not seem very important, as there is no apparent outcome from this decision.
The outcome from this decision is that our editors are currently updating WG documents in accordance with the direction that was agreed upon by the WG. In my opinion, it does require WG consensus to make a major change to a WG work item, such as the scoped address architecture.
What is important though is that the WG not be railroaded into agreeing to a later document (which is rumoured to be going to be written one day) with the argument that the WG already reached consensus that this be done, and that no re-opening of that issue will be permitted (which is what I anticipate may happen). That is, if this planned document ever appears, the only discussion allowed may be whether or not it says the right things to implement the supposed consensus, and not whether or not the document itself is a good thing to publish. That cannot be allowed to happen, and certainly not based upon the flawed processes in this particular instance.
I agree. This cannot be allowed to happen, and there is no intention of handling the situation this way. We have _repeatedly_ indicated that the March/April decision was only about the general course of action that the we would pursue.
All documents produced as part of this course of action will be subject to discussion by the WG, and they will go through WG last call, etc. In keeping with normal IETF processes, these documents won't be sent to the IESG unless they represent the consensus of the WG at that time.
Finally, while not strictly relevant to the current question, you may also wish to know that on April 10 (the day after the decision was announced), I sent a message to each of the WG chairs (and copied to the WG mailing list - Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) in which I asked ...
You can expect an appeal against the decision that there is rough consensus here. What there is, is a debate. You can treat this message as an official request to the WG chairs that they reconsider the stated position. That's the first step ...
The WG chairs did not bother to reply to any of the issues raised in that message. Or at least, they have not so far.
I did reply to this message, also on April 10th, just a few hours after you sent it. A multi-person discussion ensued, and I tried to be responsive to the points raised in that discussion. It wasn't my intention to be non-responsive, and I am sorry if you found my response inadequate.
It is my hope that we can re-focus this discussion on making the right technical decisions within the IPv6 WG moving forward. I would encourage you to read the current documents, which include:
- The latest scoped address architecture (currently a WG I-D) - Bob Hinden's local addressing proposal (accepted as a WG I-D, but not republished yet) - The upcoming updates to the local addressing requirements, authored by Fred Templin and Tony Hain (should be available very soon).
Your technical input on these documents would be very welcome.
Margaret
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