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

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On Sep 10, 2011, at 10:44 AM, Russ Housley wrote:

> That said, at the plenary at IETF 81, Harald suggested that we have waited so long that incremental improvements may not be the right approach, rather it was time for 2026bis.  I agree that it is needed, but I am not sure the IETF community is willing to tackle a project of that size and complexity.

I suspect that there are two underlying problems, both significant.

1. Many people would see an attempt to change the process as a "threat" of one kind or another, feeling like the result of such change under current circumstances would likely be worse than the status quo.

2. There seems to be wide perceptual variation among IETF participants as to the organization's purpose and/or what's wrong with the current process.

I think there's a need for consensus-building around these two topics (and perhaps others) before even considering whether and how to revise 2026.  In the first case, we need to find out what people see as threats and use that to bound the charter of the rewrite effort so that people won't feel like they have to be in damage control mode.  But the second topic is even more important.   

Keith