Re: [Idr] Review of draft-abraitis-bgp-version-capability-07

[Donatas Abraitis <[e-mail]>]

>- The author never asked the list, or chairs, to adopt the draft as a WG
item, so we didn’t do a formal call. In retrospect, we chairs should have
been more proactive about this, since I see Donatas has only posted to the
list one other time, which should be a hint that he might not be completely
familiar with how we run the WG.

Hello John,

unfortunately yes, I'm not familiar with the process.

>Second, a comment about naming: I find “version” to be a terribly
confusing name, since BGP has a version number of its own. I would prefer
almost any other name, for example “description” or the wordier
“software-version”. “Version” on its own is ambiguous in a way I don’t
think is helpful for anyone. (Feedback like this would have come as a
matter of course, if the document had been a WG document.)

Agree about changing naming. "software-version" or "daemon-version" sounds
better than just "version". I thought about that as well (confusion with
BGP version).

P.S. I just want to double-check, because sorry, don't know the process,
what should I do actually now with this draft?

Thank you, guys.

On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 9:30 PM John Scudder <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Aug 27, 2020, at 11:04 PM, John Scudder <
> jgs=[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>
> one of the chairs will follow up tomorrow
>
>
> (Co-chair hat on)
>
> TL;DR: I’d prefer a different way forward, as a WG document, but I don’t
> see a basis for asking ISE not to publish if that’s the author’s
> preference. I do have a couple comments at the bottom that I’d like
> addressed.
>
> Longer version:
>
> I went back and reviewed the list traffic on this draft. Here’s the
> timeline I see:
>
> - Donatas told the WG about the draft on August 2, 2019. This kicked off a
> thread that ran until August 20, 2019.
> - In that thread, some people liked the draft, some didn’t, some suggested
> using draft-ietf-idr-operational-message to achieve similar functionality.
> - The author never asked the list, or chairs, to adopt the draft as a WG
> item, so we didn’t do a formal call. In retrospect, we chairs should have
> been more proactive about this, since I see Donatas has only posted to the
> list one other time, which should be a hint that he might not be completely
> familiar with how we run the WG.
> - Be that as it may, on November 21, three months after the previous
> thread trailed off, Adrian told the list Donatas had requested ISE
> publication. That was a second missed opportunity for the chairs to say
> “ahem”.
>
> There was also some private traffic, in which Donatas sought guidance from
> the chairs and Adrian. I think maybe there was an in-person conversation
> between Adrian and me as well, that eventuated into Adrian’s November note
> to IDR.
>
> If I had it to do over again, I would have stepped in after the August
> thread and encouraged Donatas to offer it as a WG document if that was his
> desire. I’d have provided feedback of that nature to Donatas’ unicast
> message. I’d also have stepped in after Adrian’s November message and said
> similar.
>
> But I don’t have it to do over, and here we are. Donatas and Adrian now
> have sunk cost in publishing on the ISE stream. I also don’t know for
> certain what motivated Donatas to walk away after what, to me, was a fairly
> friendly and productive WG mail thread last August; I speak of this more a
> couple paragraphs down.
>
> I don’t think it’s out of the question to adopt the work in IDR even at
> this late date; indeed there seems to be some interest in the problem
> space. My *guess* (and it is only a guess) is that the WG would end up
> preferring an approach that looks more like operational-message, though,
> and less like version-capability. I base this on the fact that the WG has
> been fairly steadfast in declining to bung strings into miscellaneous
> messages. I can think of several examples where it was proposed, and only
> one example where we’ve actually done it — RFC 8203, and I think the only
> reason that prevailed was that the session is already doomed in that case,
> so it’s easier to stomach doing something messy.
>
> So, if Donatas is wedded to the exact implementation documented in
> draft-abraitis, then it is true, he shouldn’t offer it as a WG
> contribution, since that would hand change control to the WG. In that case,
> if the capability is to be shipped anyway, it’s better to document it with
> an ISE publication than to not document it. My impression from the mail
> I’ve reviewed is that this is the case.
>
> On the other hand, if this was a misunderstanding and Donatas thought he’d
> been rejected and that’s why he took his document to Adrian… Donatas, you
> haven’t been rejected, you just didn’t ask in the way we were expecting to
> hear, and we chairs didn’t do a good job of encouraging your contribution.
> Sorry for that.
>
> In short, I agree with Robert’s message of August 22, 2020. Procedurally,
> though, I don’t think IDR has a veto pen: we chose to give the registry an
> FCFS range, and by definition we don’t have a veto over that. The pointy
> end of permissionless innovation is, we don’t get to deny permission. I
> don’t think draft-abraitis would harm the BGP protocol, it’s just not the
> way the WG might choose to solve the problem. So, if Donatas wants to
> publish it as is (and it seems he does), then it’s settled.
>
> I do have a couple further remarks about the draft, though:
>
> First, I see that section 3 mentions that
>
>    Although this document is not an IETF Standards Track document,
>
> While I’m glad this is mentioned, I think it would be worth saying
> something similar in the abstract and introduction, instead of burying it
> in the middle. For example, “This document is not the product of an IETF
> working group and is not an IETF Standards Track document". Perhaps this is
> a usual thing to do with ISE stream documents anyway, and it would come
> later in the editing process, in which case sorry for the noise.
>
> Second, a comment about naming: I find “version” to be a terribly
> confusing name, since BGP has a version number of its own. I would prefer
> almost any other name, for example “description” or the wordier
> “software-version”. “Version” on its own is ambiguous in a way I don’t
> think is helpful for anyone. (Feedback like this would have come as a
> matter of course, if the document had been a WG document.)
>
> Thanks,
>
> —John
>


-- 

*Donatas Abraitis*
*Systems Engineer*
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