Re: New work items

[Eric Rosen <erosen at cisco.com>]

Ross> The current 5+ year old charter is indeed rather vague regarding what
Ross> multicast work is needed (or was anticipated as needed 5 years
Ross> ago). This is something that would have been nice to have fixed long
Ross> ago. Given that the future work of L3VPN is likely to be largely on
Ross> multicast, it would be desirable to figure out what future work we can
Ross> currently anticipate is wanted and get the charter updated.

I don't think there is any need to change the rules in the middle of the
game.  The charter is fine the way it is.  In any event, until it is
changed, I see no justification for failing to accept "new" work items.

Ross> I suppose that the IDR charter could be re-written to say a very
Ross> simple "work on BGP enhancements forever". This would be a pretty
Ross> accurate top-level description of what IDR does, and might not be all
Ross> that different from the L3VPN WG's charter's current description of
Ross> multicast work

I think that's a fairly good model, as it allows for relatively quick
response to customer demands.  In many cases features are going to get
implemented anyway, and the IETF should encourage, not discourage, the
creation of public specifications for IETF review.  If the IESG had to
pre-approve the addition of every new BGP feature to the IDR charter, the
IDR WG would be a lot less useful.