Re: WG Review: Stay Home Meet Only Online (shmoo)

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 3:52 PM S Moonesamy <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi Alissa,
> At 06:22 AM 14-07-2020, Alissa Cooper wrote:
> >Suresh Krishnan, Russ Housley, and myself. See
> ><
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/manycouches/Qls9UHKkG4kE9KKK4WQ-KBc0oLg/
> >.
> >
> > >
> > >  2. Who approved the draft charter?
> >
> >The IESG.
>
> I find it awkward to broach the following subject as you are an Area
> Director.  You may have noticed that I have zero support.
>
> A person cannot be both judge and jury.  Within an IETF context, a
> person cannot be both the author and reviewer of a document; an Area
> Director cannot sponsor his/her own draft.  The reason is that it
> would create a conflict of interest.  In my opinion, writing the
> draft charter and approving it creates a potential conflict of interest.
>

Ignoring the rest of your message, this simply does not comport with either
existing practice or 2418, which explicitly states:

  The formation of a working group requires a charter which is
   primarily negotiated between a prospective working group Chair and
   the relevant Area Director(s), although final approval is made by the
   IESG with advice from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).

While you may wish that the IETF process didn't allow the AD to write
the charter, the plain text here says otherwise.

-Ekr