Re: [AGENTS] BOF at IETF

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, 16 Nov 1996 13:17:49 -0800 (PST) [e-mail] wrote:
> Sounds kind stiff to me, to not even allow iinformation about related
> events to be made visible at the meeting, or in IETF-Announce, or any other
> recoginzed IETF communication channel.
> 
> Perhaps you do not mean to imply such a draconian reading;-)...\Stef

Stef,

There is a slippery slope here and I'd encourage a more liberal 
reading as soon as I understand how to characterize the "Agents" 
effort in a way that makes it different.  We've had several attempts 
or incidents in the past in which groups that have not gone through
any of the IETF review processes have wanted to co-locate meetings 
with IETF.   In the eyes of sloppy publicists or reporters, 
"co-locate" often spills over into "co-sponsor", or 
"presented and discussed at IETF", or even "IETF endorses".  While 
I'm sure that isn't the intent here, that blurring into IETF 
endorsement or implicit IETF standardization of something over 
which IETF has no control (or much influence) has sometimes even 
appeared to be intentional.  You will also recall that OMG is one of 
the organizations that has, in the past, asked IETF to endorse or 
standardize their technology, usually without releasing either 
change control or freely-available (and low or zero cost) copies of 
their specifications.

Until we have a theory or model that distinguishes an OMG-based 
agent effort from these more problematic situations, I think the 
draconian reading is necessary and appropriate.  One such model 
might be a liaision with OMG that would make all relevant OMG 
specifications and publications available to the IETF community on 
the same basis that RFCs are available.

 regards,
     john