Re: Should the IESG rule or not? and all that...

[Brian E Carpenter <brc at zurich.ibm.com>]

Joe,

Joe Touch wrote:
> Keith Moore wrote:
>
>
> > > Keith,
> > >
> > > The IESG can still exercise their best engineering judgment as
> > > individuals, as the rest of us do.
> > >
> > > The IESG role itself need not incorporate a privileged position from
> > > which to wield that judgement. There's plenty left to do.
> >
> > Joe,
> >
> > The IESG has several duties that are defined in RFC 2026 and other
> > documents.  These duties include using engineering judgment to determine
> > whether documents meet criteria for standards track, or whether to bless
> > certain kinds of protocol extensions.   All this notion of "privilege"
> > misses the point - which is that we cannot ensure document or protocol
> > quality without having some set of people decide whether or not a
> > proposal is good enough.
>
>
> Re-reviewing 2026, in all places the IESG is noted as being largely
> reactive to the community and guiding process.
>
> Only sec 6.1.2 notes the application of technical judgement, but only
> regarding maturity of the document and the standards level being sought
> - specifically as "technical quality and clarity". It specifically notes
> that (emphasis mine) "_independent_ technical review" can be solicited
> if there are issues of its impact on the Internet architecture.

You are quoting very selectively. The context is rather different from
what you imply:

   In order to obtain all of the information necessary to make these
   determinations, particularly when the specification is considered by
   the IESG to be extremely important in terms of its potential impact
   on the Internet or on the suite of Internet protocols, the IESG may,
   at its discretion, commission an independent technical review of the
   specification.

In other words, the IESG gets to make the judgement call, but may choose
to get an independent review. This happens. As a matter of fact, I do
it every two weeks for all the drafts on the agenda, and Harald did it before
me. It's all public, see
http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/gen/art/gen-art.html.

> Right now, the IESG is conducting its own, non-independent technical
> review - therein lies the issue, IMO.

It's very clear that RFC 2026 sets the IESG up as the reviewer of
last resort (modulo the appeal process). I really don't understand
your issue except perhaps as a criticism of 2026. If the IESG isn't
to be the reviewer of last resort, who should it be?

> > If IESG people were to personally benefit from their exercise of this
> > "privilege" you'd have a valid gripe.
>
>
> Personal gain is not the only motive; power can be its own motive. The
> gripes are validated by cases of abuse of privilege. Others have raised
> a few such cases, e.g., where individuals didn't recuse themselves from
> process when they had personal interest in the outcome of a doc.

I don't recall any such case being raised. Can you point to
the relevant messages in the archive?
> > But I don't recall ever seeing
> > this happen.  If it does happen, I don't think it happens very often.
>
>
> Neither are reasons not to prohibit it or address it when it occurs.

Conflict of interest is covered in RFC 3710 (which isn't a BCP, as it was
a first cut).

   Brian


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