Re: [decade] WG Action: Conclusion of Decoupled Application Data Enroute (decade)

["Rahman, Akbar" <[e-mail]>]

To All,



I also want to make some points for the record:

- As an author, I do NOT feel that I was part of any extensive discussions regarding potential shutting down of the DECADE WG and especially stopping the current active WG drafts (especially the Architecture I-D where I was an author).  

- We did have one lunch meeting in Vancouver with Martin and the chairs but that was publicly announced and open to all in the WG.  At that meeting, I recall Martin asking the attendees if there was industry interest for the DECADE work.  From what I recall, everyone there did express various levels of interest and support.  I didn’t hear anyone say that DECADE was a "wasted effort". So, frankly I was surprised and disappointed to see the WG shut down so suddenly.  If there really is no community support to continue with the activity, then so be it.  But you cannot conclude that there is not interest without first having an open discussion.

- In terms of the document quality.  The first draft of the Architecture I-D was in March 2011.  Since then we have gotten extensive comments from various excellent reviewers.  But as is often the case when you have multiple reviewers, you sometimes get conflicting directions.  Some reviewers wanted a high level abstract architecture that avoided all "implementation" details.  Other reviewers wanted a more detailed approach that got more into the details of the protocols and inner workings of the nodes.  I personally tried in a good faith effort to address all the comments and to try to strike a balance in addressing the philosophies of the different reviewers.

- I agree with Kostas that many documents in other WGs go through similar issues but at the end still managed to produce good work.

- To conclude, I devoted in good faith a fair amount of my energy to participate in advancing the topics in the WG since the first session back in Anaheim.  I defer to the higher powers to make the decision on closing the DECADE WG or not.  However, I clearly want to state that I think it was unfortunate to also suddenly terminate the DECADE Architecture I-D which was being extensively revised whenever we got reviewer comments.  I understand if people are saying that more work has to be done to get it to publication state.  But that does not warrant, in my opinion, to just shut down the work.  Honestly, if you use that criteria there would be many WG documents in other groups that should also be abruptly shut down.


Respectfully,


Akbar

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Konstantinos Pentikousis
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2012 8:15 AM
To: Martin Stiemerling; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [decade] WG Action: Conclusion of Decoupled Application Data Enroute (decade)

Dear Martin, All,

  |The DECADE working group has just been closed by your responsible Area
  |Director.
  |
  |This may come as a surprise to some in the WG

Indeed, it has been a surprise.

  | but it should not be a surprise for the working drafts authors

That's fine, but I think some sort of announcement (and even better a discussion) should have been circulated prior to the IESG announcement. I'm not interested into _who_ should have done this. It's too late and, in the end, irrelevant at this stage. But there's an order of magnitude more people on this mailing list than in the author line of all drafts together. I would consider this a breakdown in communication between the inner- and outer-circle. This was far from what, in general, I would call a "graceful teardown".

  | Both drafts do leave any number of key questions unanswered

I do agree with most of your technical comments. I sent reviews on both documents earlier. That said, imo, this action was a bit abrupt. I do recall a few groups that were much later in their timelines than decade is now, and they still managed to do decent work after a (prolonged) slow start.

In any case, I respect your decision, but I do not second it.

Best Regards,

Kostas