Re: bettering open source involvement

["HANSEN, TONY L" <[e-mail]>]

The fastest I’ve ever gotten an RFC out was 5 months from initial -00 draft to RFC publication.

When it happened:

*) it was an individual contribution for a WG that was already in place
*) it was short, to the point and apropos to the WG
*) people in the WG were interested in it
*) it got reviewed in a single IETF WG meeting cycle, but remained an individual contribution to the WG
*) the AD wasn’t swamped with other items
*) there was nothing controversial in it

So RFCs CAN be done in a minimum amount of time.

                Tony

From: ietf <[e-mail]> on behalf of Alia Atlas <[e-mail]>
Date: Friday, July 29, 2016 at 9:04 AM

That certainly aligns with what I've heard as well, but can I poke into a bit more.
I know that, for instance, I can get a draft from written to the RFC Editor in 6 weeks,
if it isn't controversial.   Most of that time is to allow adequate review at the WG, IETF
Last Call, directorates and IESG levels.

My sense is that the rest of the time goes to the WG process which has aspects of:
   a) Getting people interested in the idea
   b) Having folks cycle in and out of paying attention and commenting
   c) Having authors/editors be distracted and unresponsive.
   d) Having WG Chairs be distracted/unresponsive and want more discussion first.
   e) Avoiding having actively hard discussions about contentious points.
   f) (sometimes) waiting for implementations to sanity-check

It feels like a WG group or topic in a fixed area with agreement could get past many of these slow-downs - if there were general agreement and a culture in that WG of doing so.

We aren't, after all, doomed to repeat the delays of the past :-)  which isn't to say that this would be easy.

What do you think?  Are there factors that I'm missing?   Is there a technical topic where there could be enthusiasm to push?

Regards,
Alia