Re: "community" for the RFC series

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

Hi Stephen,
At 04:20 AM 05-10-2019, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>ISTM that damages the argument that there's more than the
>IETF involved - if we can't characterise (characterise, not
>"count") the "who else" in some sensible manner then we do
>kinda end up where Christian seemed to be starting from.

That's a good point.

I went through some documents, e.g. RFC 6635 and the discussions 
which happened many years ago.  There is the following in the RFC: 
"to better serve the communities that produce and depend on the RFC 
Series".  I gather that the usage of the word "communities"  is 
intentional, i.e. it means that there is more than one community.

Is the IRTF a subset of the IETF?  If that was the case, they can 
folded into one community.  One side-effect of such a decision is 
that it constrains (future) decisions of the IRTF about its 
identity.  We could hand-wave that question and deal with it when it 
becomes a problem.  As I look back, I would say that this is why the 
IETF ended up with its inconsistent stories.

I assume that the IAB is aware that there are other organizations 
which rely on documents published through the Series.  In my opinion, 
some of those organization might not agree to be seated under the 
IETF umbrella.

There was a comment [1] from Mr Johansson.  There are a few persons 
on the ietf@ mailing list who are ex-IAB members.  I have no doubt 
that they would understand what the comment means.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/3lVQg1IX1HGjgT-ogevbLPHqyyc