Design Teams (was "v 1.2, IETF material")

[Gary Scott Malkin <[e-mail]>]

Design teams represent a tradeoff between process openness and
efficiency; the more closed a group is, the more efficiently it
can accompish its task.  While nobody would object to getting
things done efficiently, people will object to the lack of
openness.

There are two aspects to openness: accessability and influence.  
If there is a closed group of people working on a standard, they
have access to information which will decrease their companies'
lead times to market in an unfair way.  The solution to this is
to require design teams to have charters, publish minutes, and
make interim drafts available for perusal, if not for comment.
The closed group also has more influence of the design which
allows for creation of standards more easily implemented by the
designers, possibly at the expense of others.  The solution for
this is to have some mechanism by which people can appeal for
inclusion to the group (those people recognize the need to be
included from analysis of the group's minutes and drafts).

I think that following these guidelines allows us to legitimize
design teams without raising any "fairness" specters.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Malkin                         Humankind asks: "Why are we here?"
[phone]                      Earth responds: "PLASTIC, morons."