Re: Why ask for IETF Consensus on a WG document?

[Doug Barton <[e-mail]>]

On 06/24/2011 09:08, John C Klensin wrote:
>
>
> --On Friday, 24 June, 2011 13:34 +1200 Brian E Carpenter
> <[e-mail]>  wrote:
>
>> ...
>> I think that's about right. There were several strong and very
>> raional opinions against this, including some who were not
>> involved in the similarly rough consensus in the WG
>> discussion. But (speaking as a co-author of one of the drafts
>> being historicised) I'd say the balance of opinion was to
>> publish. However, it's a close call.
>
> Brian,
>
> I see another problem here that, IMO, is complementary to the
> issue that Paul raises and enough independent of that issue that
> one could agree that the consensus determination was reasonable
> but still wrong (I don't concede the first, but want to look at
> the second).
>
> I've never assumed that the LC process is a binary one, with the
> only possible answers being "approve as written" or "complete
> trash".  It is a call for comments, not an approval vote.   The
> IESG clearly recognizes the distinction, although usually in
> minor ways -- tuning of documents after IETF LC or IESG reviews
> is almost certainly the norm rather than the exception and that
> tuning is sometimes fairly significant.
>
> In this case, it would not be hard to convince me that there was
> pretty good IETF consensus that an unrestricted recommendation
> for using 6to4 was appropriate.  Even most of 6to4's strongest
> advocates seem to agree that using it in stupid and naive ways
> leads to bad outcomes.  But consensus on that subject is not
> consensus that moving the whole business to Historic is a good
> idea.

I haven't seen those 2 ideas conflated anywhere, but it's not impossible 
that I've missed something.

> To paraphrase at least one comment, there is danger of
> throwing the baby (and perhaps some of the plumbing fixtures)
> away with the bath water.
>
> What I saw was what appeared to me to be some fairly strong
> arguments for looking at the problem in a different way -- a way
> that I've seen no evidence the WG considered at all.   That
> would be to explore alternatives to the rather blunt instrument
> of making a protocol specification historic: explaining what
> needs to be done to get it right (your document does a lot of
> that) and then figuring out ways to warn against the uses and
> configurations that we all (or mostly) agree are bad news.

By "your document" above are you referring to Brian's 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-v6ops-6to4-advisory ? If so I 
would argue that the extensive WG discussion about both documents meets 
your criteria. Taken together the 2 documents represent a series of 
compromises between those of us whose opinion is "Kill 6to4 dead, 
yesterday" and those who would like to give it as graceful an exit as 
possible. The "historic" document points out the reasons that doing it 
at all is probably a bad idea, and asks that it be off by default; while 
the "advisory" document tells people that want to to do it anyway how to 
do it right. Personally I was very satisfied with both products of the 
WG and taken as a whole I think they describe a very rational approach.

I would also encourage anyone who has strong opinions about the topic to 
read the WG archives for discussion of both drafts. It was wide-ranging 
and, I believe, thorough. I briefly considered summarizing the high 
points in this message, but my fear is that it would simply re-open 
debate on topics already covered more adequately in the WG archives.


hth,

Doug

-- 

	Nothin' ever doesn't change, but nothin' changes much.
			-- OK Go

	Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS.
	Yours for the right price.  :)  http://SupersetSolutions.com/