Re: IETF areas re-organisation steps

[Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[e-mail]>]

Hi, Robert,

On Jan 7, 2015 5:15 AM, "Robert Sparks" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> I'd like to focus for a moment on another part of Jari's original message.
>
>
> On 12/25/14 1:16 PM, Jari Arkko wrote:
>>
>> Dear Community:
>>
>> In October, we let you know that we would be coming up with some
proposals
>
> <trim/>
>
>>
>>
>> III.  MERGING OF UPPER LAYER PROTOCOL AREAS
>>
> <trim/>
>
>> DISPATCH, TSVWG, and APPSAWG
>> would continue to function much as they currently do.
>>
>>
> I see this as problematic.
>
> RAI is currently operating following RFC 5727, where dispatch is defined.
It is a consensus document describing how the area decided to behave. It
does not seem right to say _parts_ of the new combined area will follow
that consensus. How are you planning to avoid "well, that's the APPs part
of <newareaname> and we do things like this over there"? If you're not
planning to avoid that, then it's not really clear what problem the
organization is really going to solve - the resulting ADs will have to
behave the same regardless of their label.

Speaking as 1/15th of the problem, thanks for mentioning this during the
discussion.

I can confirm that the IESG is aware of RFC 5727 and the definition of
DISPATCH therein.

I have asked that the IESG identify any other changes to active BCPs that
would be required with various organizational changes being discussed.

I would offer that the IESG has
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-dawkins-iesg-one-or-more/ on this
week's telechat agenda, which did a full IETF consensus call about changing
one word in a definition that appears in two key process BCPs, as evidence
that we take the concern you're raising here seriously.

> The arguments in the past about whether a group belonged in transport or
RAI, while occasionally silly, were _usually_ helpful in clarifying the
problem that the proposed group was starting to circle around. Some of the
comments from active TSV members have touched on aspects of this already.
As proposed, we will lose that tension, and I think we'll end up with
muddier charters as a result. (There are other ways to preserve that
tension, of course, but we would need to explicitly put them in place).

Thanks for the background. As you would remember, I was a fan of the
DISPATCH concept when it was put in place, and ended up chairing two
working groups that were DISPATCHed (MARTINI and SIPCLF), but I wasn't as
involved in RAI after joining the IAB in 2010. So, that's helpful for me.

> If the thought of developing something like dispatch-related parts of RFC
5727 to describe how a new combined area (whatever its ingredients) plans
to operate seems onerous, or too heavyweight, I'd take it as a warning that
we're headed for something unpleasant, or that has no real effect on
organization, improving the efficiency of making standards, making
recruiting ADs easier, or reducing AD load.
>
> Rather than that, I hope we could fairly quickly come up with a good
description of how such a combined area would behave, and I hope that's not
"just like the pieces do now".

Indeed. Indeed.

Please keep that feedback coming in.

Spencer