[hrpc] draft-irtf-hrpc-political - current determination regarding RG last call.

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Hi,

Now that the conversation has paused, I believe it is time to say
something about the draft and its readiness for RG last call.  In order
not to bury the lead, my conclusion is that at this time is that it is 
not yet ready.  I will explain

First I want to say that I think this is an important piece of work and
one that needs to be done right.  I think the most value can be achieved
by having a document that does justice to the various sides of this
important question, and one that points the way to have further
discussions about the implications of the question in a balanced, 
informed and considered manner.

I think the document does a decent job of expressing one side of the
argument, though there are places in that discussion that are shy on
references and on arguments that logically show why that view should be
considered the right argument. Nonetheless the basics of that argument
are well established. What I think is missing is an equivalent basis for
opposing views. I think the various detailed discussions of disagreement
support that view.  Opposing views, while in some cases mentioned and
even described briefly, are not given the same depth of analysis that is
given to the predominant view.

In terms of the HRPC RG's view on the document, the group of respondents
was split. There are several who think the document is ready to go.
There are also as many who think it is not. In my opinion, we have not
yet reached rough consensus for publication.

I appreciate the speed with which Niels put out versions with the
specific fixes he believed necessary to satisfy the arguments, but feel
they sometimes missed the point about the document not being a balanced
discussion of the issues. I also think we saw that those with a
different point of view did not agree with the updated presentation.

Regarding the discussion of whether we need RG consensus to publish in
the IRSG stream: as I have said several times, I believe that in
becoming a RG draft, a private draft becomes subjected to the RG rough
consensus process.  It is not that all the issues in the doc need to
have rough consensus agreement, but the document itself needs to be
something the RG supports publishing in the IRSG track. This is the same
process we followed with RFC8280. It is not as if the IRSG RFC track is
the only opportunity people have to publish their ideas or their
advocacy. I believe the IRSG RFC track serves as a way for a RGs to
publish documents that are supported by the RG's research and
discussions. This is something I try to make clear to people when they
request that a private draft become a RG draft, I ask whether people
wanted the draft to become subject to RG rough consensus because that is
a criterion I use in moving the document forward.

As I said above, I think this is an important piece of work and think
that this RG should be able to produce a well researched and broad
document on this subject; one which has often been an elephant in the
room in technical discussions. At this point, I think it is only part
way there.

My current thought is that I would like to see work on this draft
continue. I think it might be good to find an additional editor or two
to work alongside Niels on taking the next steps on the doc. I am
interested in hearing from volunteers for this task.  I would also like
to devote some time in Singapore to a discussion of what content is
needed to complete the draft and to develop a plan for its completion.
The discussion brought up many issues.  I am still working on trying to
abstract a brief view of the issues that people brought up and plan on
presenting that as part of the discussion. There were also a few
suggestions of what the document still needed, which I would like to
explore in open discussion.

I appreciate the amount of thought and effort people put into responding
to my call for feedback. I also appreciate the amount of Niels' work
that has gone into the draft to date.

thanks

avri