WEIRDS BOF session
IETF 82
2011-11-16 9:00 - 11:30 

Minutes taken by Olafur Gudmundsson, edited by Andrew Sullivan 

After presentations on the existing implementations of Whois-like data
delivered in a RESTful framework, there was considerable discussion.
There appeared to be agreement that there were issues with IRIS that
caused people not to implement or deploy significant parts of it.
There appeared to be agreement that the RIR/number regsistry issues
were fairly well understood and possible to solve.  Several people
expressed considerable scepticism about the chances of success in
response to domain name registry issues.  At the same time, there
appeared to be moderate agreement that there were issues to be solved
for name registries.

There appeared to be both data provider-side and data consumer-side
demand for some work.  This included strong support for the notion
that the data be easily machine usable.

There were expressions of support for starting with a smaller problem
(just number registries) to begin with.  There were expressions of
support for avoiding making incompatible systems for name registries,
but no commitment to solve the name registry issues at the same time.

The BOF chairs asked a number of questions:

    Is there a problem to be solved
        - for number registries?
            There was a loud hum 'yes', and none for 'no'.

        - for domain name registries?
            There was a loud hum 'yes' and some for 'no'.
            
    Can we come up with a problem statement in a reasonable time
        - for number registries?
            There was a loud-to-medium hum for 'yes', none for 'no'.

        - for domain name registres?
            There was a faint hum for 'yes' and a louder hum for 'no'.

    For the number registries, if we build something do you believe
    there is zero chance of deployment?

        There was no hum for 'yes' and a slight hum for 'no'.

The chairs asked whether there would be volunteers to work on drafts,
and perhaps 10 hands went up.  The chairs asked whether there would be
volunteers to review drafts, and perhaps 20 hands went up.  There were
three people willing to express a willingness to chair a working group. 

The chairs thanked everyone and adjourned the meeting on time.