Re: draft-klensin-iaoc-member-01 (was: Re: I-D Action: draft-hardie-iaoc-iab-update-00.txt)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Thursday, February 18, 2016 09:41 -0500 Andrew Sullivan
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>> If you want to change who serves on the IAOC from the IAB,
>> then we need to have a rule with respect to that appointment
>> that gives us a similar result
> 
> This doesn't follow.  Your argument is of the form, "We
> currently have a formal rule that the appointment is nominally
> for one year, with a possibility of it being shorter; but
> social pressure means that in practice it is more stable.
> Therefore, in the new system we need a formal rule that
> enforces that greater stability."  The premises don't really
> support your argument.  It'd be just as reasonable to conclude,
> "Therefore, there should be a social expectation that people be
> prepared to do this for two years or more."  My experience of
> the IETF suggests that we are better off with more social
> conventions and fewer formal rules, because the formal rules
> all require exception handling, recovery rules, and so on;
> whereas when social conventions turn out not to work perfectly
> you can treat the case as the one-off that it usually is.
> 

FWIW, I strongly agree with Andrew.  

The draft was very much developed in the spirit of "the relevant
parties should use discretion and figure out what to do, with no
more than general guidance from the spec/rules" and, "if we
cannot trust the IAB and IETF to do the right thing, we need to
be more focused on the problems that implies and how to fix them
than on tuning the IAOC.

I have also finally figured out what the fundamental issue may
be on which Mike and I disagree.  In case it is useful to
others, he has said several times that various things about how
the IAOC is organized and who its members are should be up to
the IAOC.     To me, the IAOC is just a committee, appointed (in
some set of ways) to represent the community in running the IASA
for the IETF.  I think the community should be willing to hear
opinions from IAOC members about what they believe would be most
efficient or effective but, especially in times where some of us
have serious questions about the openness and transparency of
the IASA generally and the IAOC and its committees in
particular, the decisions about the structure of the IAOC and
the qualifications and appointment mechanisms really have to be
the community's.  If they are necessary, so do decisions about
the tradeoff between, e.g., transparency and efficiency.

I still believe the ISOC ex-officio position is different from
the IAB and IESG ones because IASA is ultimately an ISOC
function, the IAD is an ISOC employee, etc.  Those are line
management activities, not Board-level strategy ones, and, to
me, that argument for the ISOC CEO having an IAOC seat is almost
the same as the one for having the IAD on the IAOC rather than
just supervised by it.   If ISOC comes back to the community and
says "the CFO would be better" or "the CEO and CFO should
jointly hold the ex-officio seat", I think the community should
take that input seriously, but that is a different question.   I
can argue for or against an ISOC BoT appointment (or position)
on the IAOC (btw, more strongly for the IETF Trust), but that is
rather separate from the ISOC senior executive role.

Finally, in case it hasn't been clear, the draft was posted to
provide a framework for discussion about reforming the way the
IAOC is organized and/or appointed (rather than tuning the way
the IAB does its work) and in response to comments from Mike and
others that we needed something written from an IASA
perspective.  If someone wants to take it over or fork it to
provide a different set of details, feel free.   On the other
hand, I'm fairly impatient, and think others should be
impatient, with positions that appear to be imply that we should
not make any changes without a comprehensive review and reform
of the IASA design.

     john