Re: are we willing to do change how we do discussions in IETF? (was: moving from hosts to sponsors)

["JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey at jefsey.com>]

On 17:55 24/06/2006, Keith Moore said:
> That's not quite sufficient, because most WGs aren't proceeding 
> according to good engineering discipline (e.g. they're doing things 
> in the wrong order, like trying to define the protocol before the 
> problem space is understood), there's little external visibility of 
> what the WG is doing (so it's difficult to make timely input without 
> actually following the entirety of the mailing list discussion), and 
> often, nobody with any authority over the WG is checking to see 
> whether the WG is actually responding appropriately to such 
> comments.  A more formal process is necessary.

+1

> > Having some new sclerotic "pipeline" involved with the life
> > blood of a
> > working group sounds like a recipe for working group infarction to me.
>
> In other words, we don't want to distract WGs with useful input ... 
> better that they should keep their heads in the sand for the entire 
> 2-3 years of their existence and then produce irrelevant or even 
> harmful output.  And that way, maybe a few influential people within 
> the WG can coerce the WG into producing something that favors their 
> employers' short-term interest even if it harms other interests or 
> glosses over important limitations.

+1

At 17:46 24/06/2006, Keith Moore wrote:
> One reason that it's difficult to charter and complete WGs might be 
> that WGs have demonstrated a huge potential to do more harm than good.

+1

May be my French "cartesian" spirit, but I feel all that denotes a 
lack of method. A methodology includes milestones and check points.

- someone/group proposes an area where to produce an IETF deliverable.
- a charter is drafted, discussed and approved for that deliverable (set).

I think it should be then appropriate that the WG

- starts understanding the charter
- possibly calls on its revision from this inner study
- describes what it wants to achieve and proposes a TOC of the 
intended document, explainging how it will fit the charter. That part 
should further on be used to document the deliverable and clarify 
possible confusions.
- gets the whole thing reviewed by the community.
- works on the content of the described deliverable.
- loops back into that process when the WG discovers a flaws at a 
previous level.

At each step any third party (other wg, IESG, IAB, users ..) could 
check the consistency between the intent and the deliverable.

This methodology is the one we all use when developping a software 
program. Or may be we are not? Or may be we have not much people 
developping running code anymore.

For example, I am amazed by the total lack of WG requests for IAB 
guidance. IAB should steer the IETF deliverable consistency.

jfc

I am amazed that m.

What the IETF does is to specify a program named "Internet".  


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