Maintenance WG: Re: How to get diversity of nominees was Re: Diversity of candidates was Re: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 7:05 PM Fred Baker <[e-mail]> wrote:

> So voila! IPv4 has existed more than ten years, so we don’t need it any
> more... Also DNS, DHCP, TCP, Ethernet, SMTP - wow, that rule really clears
> the deck. And heck - even IETF chairs produce internet drafts.
>

Quite. This leads me to re-suggest a proposal I have made from time to time
which is that every area have a DISPATCH working group and every area also
have a maintenance group.

This has (sorta) happened in security with LAMPS. Faced with the need to
update cipher suites across the board, a new WG was formed which has been
tweaking every protocol in active use not in active development.

The objection generally raised is of course that this allows people to
'mess' with existing protocols adding features that shouldn't be there. But
that objection presupposes that the job of the IETF is to control
permission for permissionless innovation.

One of the reasons some WGs linger is that their function requires
continuous tweakage, GSSAPI/KITTEN being an example. Better to have one WG
with the purpose of lingering than four lingering past their sell-by.