Re: Request for feedback - IESG thoughts about new work proposals

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 10/11/2017 09:21 AM, Spencer Dawkins at IETF wrote:

> The IESG has spent considerable time discussing how we can improve our 
> ability to charter new work as soon as it’s ready and ensure proposals 
> have the resources needed for success. We want to share our 
> expectations about BOF requests and new work proposals with the 
> community because we are interested in feedback.
>

So I understand the scope of this request for feedback to be about 
improving IESG's ability to charter new work, and that's an admirable 
goal on IESG's part.

However, I wonder if IESG has come to think of the purpose of BOFs as 
being to lead to new WG charters in the short term.   If true, I think 
it's unfortunate.

One of IETF's biggest problems IMO is the tendency to silo work, to fail 
to recognize when there is a need for broadly applicable work rather 
than point solutions.   This in turn leads to a great deal of 
unnecessary complexity in network code and applications, and a 
tremendous amount of wasted effort.   The resulting tendency is to 
produce too many working groups, too many standards documents, and 
standards documents with too-limited scope or applicability.

Note that I said this is IETF's problem, not specifically IESG's 
problem.   But I see essentially no effort within IETF to try to 
identify common ground between different concerns, or to look for 
opportunities to address multiple concerns with a common framework.   
And it's much easier to do this before working groups are chartered, 
than after.   IAB has sometimes tried to do this by holding meetings, 
but the meetings have seemed fairly exclusive (there are high barriers 
to participation) and also have taken a long time to produce results.

I'd like to see an effort to encourage IETF participants in general (not 
just a few handpicked people) to think more broadly.   I'd like to see 
more meeting time devoted to identifying common ground and opportunities 
for more broadly applicable work.   Such efforts should NOT be expected 
to propose working groups, at least not in the near term.   It's fine if 
they do, but the expectation should not be there.   And I don't care 
what such sessions are called, but I think BOFs were originally supposed 
to be able to serve such purposes.

And maybe IESG is too busy to charter them, because it needs to be 
focused on working groups.   Maybe that should be left to IAB or some 
committee appointed for that purpose.   But there should be a clearly 
visible path by which IETF participants can request such sessions.

Keith

p.s. It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a working group, to 
treat every problem as if the solution were more protocol specifications.