Re: letters from Ted & Alissa

["Theodore Ts'o" <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Jul 03, 2019 at 03:51:10PM -0500, Nico Williams wrote:
> Sarah Banks wrote a post that explained some of this.  It was enough
> that I can see how RSOC might *not* have thought that the RSE would take
> early bidding the way she did.  Perhaps it was all a big failure to
> communicate rather than RSOC's failure to understand that it was
> essentially telling the RSE to get lost -- perhaps it was even a failure
> on the RSE's part rather than RSOC's.

What I haven't seen for an explanation was why did the rebid *have* to
happen in 2021.  The answer of "it's was too soon to do it in 2019" is
the best that we've heard from Sarah.  What I don't understand is why
couldn't be 2023?  What was so urgent, what was so terribly defective,
with the reprevious RFP bidding process that we have to do the re-bid
in 2021 and it couldn't wate for 2023?

The only answer when that question was raised, was the following from
Sarah:

    I’m trying to understand why the RSOC is being belittled like
    this. Help me understand. We don’t need an excuse.

Which to my mind, is non-responsive, if not downright defensive.
There also seems to be an strong belief that the RSOC is not obliged
to tell the community anything: "we don't need an excuse".

Perhaps there was some secret personnel reason that couldn't be
disclosed, and so that might be a reason why some of RSOC's decisions
have to be shrouded in secrecy.  However, I read Ted Hardie's e-mail
as saying that he didn't believe that to be the case.

In which case, inquiring minds really do want to know --- what was
causing people to believe this *had* to be done in 2021 versus 2023?
And how long would the bid process the RSOC was imaging would take?
Was it such that the RSOC had to make a recommendation in 2019 so that
the rebid process could be done by 2021?

				- Ted