Re: draft-housley-two-maturity-levels-01

["Spencer Dawkins" <[e-mail]>]

I've mentioned this to Russ privately, but it's worth saying it out loud ...


> Phillip:
>
> Obviously, I was not General AD when this happened.  However, I was
> Security AD at the time, so I was involved in the discussions that
> included the whole IESG.
>
> I made my reply to your posting because I want people to realize that
> there is another side to the story.  We need to learn from the history,
> but we need to act toward improving the future.
>
> The IESG spent a huge amount of time on the NEWTRK documents in retreat.
> The ISD proposal hit the IESG in a very bad way.  The ISD proposal
> required the IESG spend a lot of time that the individuals simply did
> not have.  Further, this came at a very, very bad time.  Admin-Rest had
> consumed way to many cycles.  Perhaps the 1-step or 2-step proposals
> could have been separated from ISDs, but that was not the path that was
> taken.  I do not know the reasons.

IESG discussions are now a lot more visible to anyone from the community who 
cares to look, than they were during any part of NEWTRK. Beginning in late 
2005, the IESG has published narrative minutes from every official telechat 
(details at http://www.ietf.org/iesg/minutes/2010/ for this year).

When I served as IESG scribe, there were VERY few unminuted discussions, and 
they were identified as "executive session" in the minutes.

In addition, I THOUGHT Scott Bradner had requested publication of 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-newtrk-repurposing-isd/, and 
that was the straw that broke the camel's back, but I didn't see any IESG 
evaluation records for any of the NEWTRK documents, except for the DECRUFT 
draft 
(https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-newtrk-decruft-experiment/). 
Speaking only for myself, I didn't know much about what the IESG thought 
before the NEWTRK session at IETF 63 in Paris, even though I was note-taker 
for every NEWTRK meeting, and I was an active working group participant 
(perhaps too active :-).

I did not have the understanding about the IESG reaction to NEWTRK that Russ 
described in his note - and I don't think Russ is mistaken about that 
reaction.

We have significantly improved the transparency of the IESG to the community 
since NEWTRK was on the docket. I can't tell you that Russ's current 
proposal will be accepted, but I think I can tell you that members of the 
community will better understand what the IESG's concerns are, and members 
of the community will understand which ADs have those concerns, so we can 
work on resolving them.

This isn't a knock at anyone serving on the IESG during the NEWTRK era, all 
of whom except for Russ have moved on from their honorable service, and 
certainly not at Brian, who supported IESG narrative minutes as General Area 
Director when that was still controversial. It was just a different time.

We still need to improve, of course, but it's fair to recognize the progress 
we've made.

Thanks,

Spencer