Re: bettering open source involvement

[Andy Bierman <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 8:33 AM, Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>
wrote:

>
>
> On 29/07/16 16:20, MH Michael Hammer (5304) wrote:
> > I'm not asserting that IETF needs to bring cycle times down to days,
> > weeks or months
>
> I think months would actually be a good goal, for some
> bits of work, and is doable in some cases. At present that
> does require quite a special kind of work and for involved
> folks to be very familiar with IETF stuff.
>
> > but my sense is that there is a brokenness to the
> > process.
>
> Well, not quite "the process" but more I think "how we operate
> the process" - a lot of delays are not due to the formal process
> but down to disagreements between smart people who are quite good
> at disagreeing subtly and also a lack of time to do this kind of
> work.
>
>

This is the best description of the WG process flaws I have ever seen.
Also the WG chairs are sometimes really slow at conflict resolution.
We have to balance "fair and open process" with some concern about
milestones.

The difference in process is most clear wrt/ YANG module development.
The IETF takes years trying to agree on the perfect data model and
opensource iterates on a solution, increasing the functionality and
operational experience relatively quickly.

The IETF needs to be better at releasing work (i.e., publishing RFCs)
that is not perfect, and is not complete, but can be completed in phases.


> Slowness to generate the standards, slowness in adoption of
> > standards, etc.  There are no magic fixes but there surely are ways
> > of reducing drag.
>
> I agree. And I think we should try get better at that despite
> pretty much every single process-change suggestion attracting
> some opposition from somewhere. (Maybe we should have a competition
> to see if anyone can come up with a universally supported process
> change for the IETF:-)
>
> S.
>
>
>

Andy