Re: [AGENTS] BOF at IETF

[Fred Baker <[e-mail]>]

[e-mail] wrote:
> Other work has suffered from being closed to broad review

which brings us back to the matter at hand, which is the agents bof.

As I tried to articulate to Tony, we have some scheduling problems
inherent in this meeting structure - there are a finite number of slots,
and we perpetually have more takers than we have slots to put them in.
and we have a finite number of things that we can do about that.

Part of what we do is review the work being done, and try to determine
not who MIGHT be interested in using it after it is completed, but who
IS interested in developing it. To do that, we ask the person proposing
the BOF to show us his posted internet drafts (which anyone, IETF or
not, can post at will) and their list of interested parties. If we have
N slots, we try to give them to the N potential BOF choices that

(a) we know about at the time we're handing out BOF slots,
(b) appear from draft count and body count to be viable, and
(c) from a quick read of the drafts appear to be going in a direction
    that both works and solves a problem.

This is certainly imperfect, and if you have suggestions we will
certainly consider them. But we are not giving one to Tony at this time
because while there appear to be two companies whose corporate positions
support Agents, we haven't been able to identify any technologists or
any other companies who actually want to work on it, and we can't seem
to find an internet draft that tells us either the problem being solved
or the solution proposed. And yes, three weeks before the IETF is pretty
late from a scheduling perspective.