--On Saturday, January 10, 2009 12:52 -0800 Dave CROCKER <d...@dcrocker.net> wrote:
>... > I can't begin to guess at the logic that uses Larry's somewhat > bizarre assertion as a basis for trying to press approval of > this clearly and substantially problematic proposal. > > To create a paraphrase, what part of "neither short term nor a > fix" did you not understand? >... With the understanding that this is _not_ a fix to any short-term problem, I think I've learned something from the IPR WG process and its "too few people really understood the documents and their implications" consensus and the resulting IETF consensus that produced 5378. That lesson goes beyond "we don't evaluate legal language at all well" and into some defects in how we approve procedural documents. Independent of the much more controversial question of which body should be approving these things and under what process, I note that we require "IANA Considerations" sections for technical documents so that IANA can check to be sure that the instructions make sense and are consistent with other registries and practices. It is now clear to me that any document that has procedural, administrative, or legal provisions or consequences should be required to contain: (i) Explicit "IASA Considerations" and/or "IETF Trust Considerations" sections, as appropriate. (ii) A requirement for explicit signoff, or at least formal comments, from those bodies before the IESG makes a decision about IETF consensus. While it isn't clear that the Trustees would have identified these implementation / transition problems during this review, giving them the opportunity and obligation to spot implementation problems --and to think through how they would implement a particular set of requirements before those requirements are cast in stone-- would have at least eliminated the "not our problem; we are just doing what we were told" attitude and comments that resulted in our looking at proposals in January rather than before the holidays. The general idea would be to explicitly put the Trustees (or the IAOC for other situations) into the position of being able to say "nice idea, but it won't work legally and/or procedurally", just as IANA can say "we have read that specification and have no idea how to implement it in practice"... and to give them the obligation to review a document, pre-approval, and decide whether to provide that advice. I believe that the IESG can impose these requirements and the additional checking/validation cycle on its own initiative, based on their having imposed the "IANA Considerations" and others on their own initiative. This is a call for that initiative or, if it is not forthcoming, for others to think enough about the issue to determination of whether collaboration on an I-D would be appropriate. It doesn't need to be done this week, but it appears to me to be something we had better have in place before anyone starts considering 5378bis (or a forked 3978ter). john _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf