Re: Conclusion of the last call on draft-housley-two-maturity-levels

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On Sep 2, 2011, at 7:07 PM, Ned Freed wrote:

>> As far as our process is concerned, the question is, do we have rough
>> consensus to accept it?  I think it's dubious that we have such consensus, and
>> apparently so do others.
> 
> Simply put, I've watched the responses to this fairly closely, and I completely
> disagree with your assessment.

ok.

>> Personally I think this proposal is Mostly Harmless, so I'm willing to hold
>> my nose about it.   But I'm very concerned about the argument that the default
>> assumption should be that we change our process even in the absence of
>> consensus to do so.
> 
>> Regarding the proposal, I get the impression that people are mostly in three
>> camps:
> 
> Well, none of these describe my own position, which is that eliminating the
> three step process will at a minimum act as an incentive to move more documents
> along. (You, and most others engaging in this debate, routinely neglect the
> psychological factors involved.)
> 
> I can easily name a dozen RFCs, all currently at proposed, that I for one will
> be strongly incented to work to advance if this step is taken.

At the risk of playing devil's advocate, how will that help?  Will the specifications significantly improve in quality and interoperability improve as a result?   Will the blessing of these documents as Internet Standards result in wider implementation and thus greater benefit to users?   (not knowing which RFCs you're talking about, I can't even guess)

From my perspective there's little problem with implementing and deploying at Proposed and having documents stay at Proposed indefinitely, provided we can ensure that the specifications are of high quality by the time they get to Proposed.  And given that people do tend to implement and deploy at Proposed, there's only marginal benefit to promoting them to anything else - except on those occasions where this serves as a carrot to fix bugs in the original spec that people might otherwise live with.  And it's not clear to me that the proposed change increases the incentive to do either.

> Additionally, by simplifying the process, we will gain essential insight into
> where other problems lie. Without such simplification I see no chance at all at
> making progress on any of these issues.

Okay, I can see that as a possibility.  Sometimes when undertaking a great task, it doesn't matter what subtask you pick to do next, as long as you do something.   Momentum is often more important than doing things in order of importance.   My question is then, how many people think that we need to undertake a great task where our process is concerned, and how many of those think that given current political conditions, if we undertake such a task, we're likely to end up with something substantially better than we have now?  (I'm open to the idea but skeptical)

> 
>> 1) Even if this is a baby step, it's a step in the right direction.  Or even
>> if it's not a step in the right direction, taking some step will at least
>> make it possible to make some changes in our process.  Maybe we'll not like
>> the results of taking this step, but at least then we'll have learned
>> something, and if the result is clearly worse we'll be motivated to change it.
>> (I call this "change for the sake of change")
> 
> That last substantially and obviously mischaracterizes this position. In fact
> I strongly recommend that you stop trying to summarize complex position with
> cute - and utterly wrong - phrases like this. This is annoying and
> quite unhelpful.

There are definitely cases where "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", I'm just skeptical that that argument applies in this specific case. 

>> 2) Fixing the wrong problem doesn't do anything useful, and will/may serve
>> as a distraction from doing anything useful.
>> (I call this "rearranging the deck chairs")
> 
>> 3) People should stop arguing about this and just hold their noses about it,
>> because the arguing will make it harder to do anything else in this space.
>> (I call this "Oceana has always been at war with Eurasia".  Ok, that's
>> probably too harsh, but it's what immediately comes to mind.)
> 
> Actually, I think there are a substantial numer of people who believe exactly
> the opposite of this.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.   Are you saying that there are a substantial number of people who wish to make it harder to do anything at all in this space, so they keep arguing about it?  Or something else?

>> The arguments that people are giving in favor of approving this bother me
>> more than the proposal itself does.  (I'm a firm believer that good decisions
>> are highly unlikely to result from flawed assumptions, and flawed assumptions
>> often affect many decisions.  So challenging a widely-held flawed assumption is
>> often more important than challenging any single decision.)
> 
> Well, the main argument I'm giving is based on my own perception of the effect
> this will have on myself and similarly minded people as a contributor. If you
> think that assessment is incorrect, then I'm sorry, but I think you're being
> extraordinarily foolish.

I think you're in an excellent position to understand how approval or disapproval of this document will affect your interest in doing work on the documents you mentioned, and I'm sure you're not the only one who would be encouraged by such a change to our process.

Keith