Re: Status of this memo

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 5:55 PM Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi Keith,
>
> On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 03:03:20PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
> > On 4/27/21 2:55 PM, Donald Eastlake wrote:
> >
> > > I agree with Andy below but just to be clear, WG draft has a formal
> > > standing as a starting point for work -- they are a draft over which
> > > the WG has taken control.
> >
> > emphatically disagree, and I believe that's a particularly harmful
> > concept to promote.
>
> Could you elaborate more on how your position relates to the BCP 25
> description of "Document Editor"?  §6.3 of RFC 2418 has:
>
>    Most IETF working groups focus their efforts on a document, or set of
>    documents, that capture the results of the group's work.  A working
>    group generally designates a person or persons to serve as the Editor
>    for a particular document.  The Document Editor is responsible for
>    ensuring that the contents of the document accurately reflect the
>    decisions that have been made by the working group.
>

Let us say we have a square peg and a round hole. There are several options:

Change the shape of the peg
Change the shape of the hole
Increase the size of the hole
Decrease the size of the peg.

As editor, I have on several occasions iterated through multiple cycles of
similar options. Each time a new draft was published, a different set of
people read it and realized it was now their ox being gored.

The document is a tool to help arrive at consensus so it cannot represent
consensus except at the end.

On occasion, I have written up a proposed change knowing full well that the
people who proposed it aren't going to like the result at all.

This sort of situation rarely comes up in 1.0 work. But when you are trying
to make a fix to legacy infrastructures....