Re: I-D Action: draft-hardie-iaoc-iab-update-00.txt

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

​Comments in-line.

Ted​

On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 7:31 PM, Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> On 2/3/2016 8:39 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>
>> But that doesn't need to
>> be the IAB chair in every case, and this is one where I think we might
>> get a benefit if we didn't require the chair."
>>
>
>
> Hi Andrew - I don't necessarily disagree with this - but, the IAOC and the
> IETF trust are linked in a very interesting way.  While it might be useful
> (and doable) to provide a "pluggable" IAOC  IAB member, because of the way
> the trust is currently structured I don't think that's a useful approach.
>
> Individuals shall be eligible to be Trustees only for so long as they are
>> Eligible Persons.
>>
>
> "Eligible Person" means, subject to Section 6.1, a then-current member of
>> the IAOC, duly appointed and in good standing in accordance with the
>> procedures of the IAOC established pursuant to IETF document BCP 101, RFC
>> 4071 (April 2005), and any duly approved successor documents, updates or
>> amendments thereto, including the RFC issued to update BCP-101 to reflect
>> the establishment of this Trust.
>>
>
> The IAB, IETF and ISOC chairs are members of both the trust and the IAOC -
> the latter on an ex-officio basis and the former based on their membership
> on the IAOC and their concurrence to serve as a trustee.
>
> The position of the IAB, IETF and ISOC chairs are more or less stable.
> The IETF chair generally changes no more than once every two years, the IAB
> chair no more than once a year.  That stability is useful for both the IAOC
> and the trust - indeed, BCP101 has the appointed members serving for 2
> years.  If you desire to swap the IAB chair for some other member of the
> IAB, you will need to address that stability issue, and, given that BCP101
> is NOT an IAB document, you will have to convince the community that your
> proposed changes are in the best interest of the community, and not just in
> the best interests of the IAB or the IAB chair.
>

​
​So, there is a bit of conflict in advice here.  On the one hand, folks
have said that the update to BCP 101 should say nothing more than that the
IAB will appoint someone, since the rest of this is internal machinery to
the IAB.  But I think your point that any document describing the change
needs to address​ the stability (and overall benefit) is a good one.  In
the working copy of the draft, I've added the following as a hint of how we
might handle that:

After community discussion, it is likely that this document will
be split into two distinct parts:  one which updates the IAOC
membership section of the relevant BCP and another which
describes the IAB’s program.

​After we've had the community discussion on the joint document, in other
words, I think we may be able to pull it apart.

Secondly, as I was considering the "internal mechanics" vs. external
expectation question, it struck me that there was a situation which could
easily arise now that would test this same situation in a slightly
different way.   Imagine for a moment that an IAB wanted to appoint two
co-chairs rather than a single chair.  That might be because an ongoing
chair had parental leave coming up, for general time management, or because
of the general point Andrew made before about the IAB acting without or
presidents. RFC 2850 currently says "select one", but an update to that to
allow co-chairs would then require the internal mechanics for how the ex
officio memberships were handled to be part of the udpated charter (which
is a BCP).  So the end result after community discussion would actually be
a document that updates both BCP 101 and BCP 39.  To meet community needs
for certainty here, in other words, we may actually need the IAB mechanics
for this have the form of a BCP.  Maybe not, but I don't think we should
rule it out entirely.

​Lastly, I think it would be useful for you to write up your proposal as
well; it makes trade-offs that are different from the ones we put forward,
and it would be useful to have them spelled out in a draft.
​
regards,

Ted