Re: [rfc-i] [IAB] New proposal/New SOW comment period

[Christian Huitema <[e-mail]>]

John,

Your note deserves a longer reply, but I can start with a brief answer.

Starting from your last point, I do believe that the Independent Stream
and its Editor provide an important function in the standard process,
both for checks and balance, so that independent contributions can be
published in the RFC series without endorsement or agreement from IETF
Working Groups or the IESG, and for providing an avenue for publication
of specification created outside of the IETF. I have all reasons to
believe that this process is working quite well, and no desire to change
that. The principles of RFC 1796 are still relevant.

I also believe that the RFC series is today pretty much centered on the
IETF. Over 80% of the publications are in the IETF stream, 15% in the
Independent stream, with IRTF and IAB sharing the reminder. But then,
these last three streams are in practice just as focused on the IETF as
the IETF stream itself. The overwhelming majority of the document
authors also participate in the IETF, contribute to WG, write drafts,
etc. The document themselves are generally part of the IETF discussion,
even if they are research pieces or independent publication. These
observations make me extremely skeptical about the supposed Internet
Community that would contribute to the RFC series independently of the
IETF. In practice, I don't see any evidence that such an independent
Internet Community exists today.

I have heard Brian Carpenter's argument that if there is not an
authorship community, there is a readership community. That leaves me
skeptical. Clearly, authors and publishers should care about their
readership, and I wish we had better ways to assess the impact of our
publications. But passive readership does not create a community, no
more than me reading ITU publications makes me part of the ITU
community. What creates a community is engagement, contributions and
sharing. I see that happening in the IETF and the IRTF. I wish more
people would participate, but in practice this means increased openness
of the IETF, recruiting existing communities and open source projects, etc.

The RFC series are part of our history and our tradition. Our tradition
is based on solid principles, such as open standards, openly documented,
easy to access, easy to read, well archived. Our tradition also gives us
the strong "RFC" brand, which we would be silly to jeopardize with some
kind of "new Coke" effort. Heather has done a lot of work to modernize
the format, the reference tools and the archival tools without breaking
too much from that tradition. That's great.

At the same time, there is a tension between the tradition and the need
to serve and recruit a wider community. Our document production time is
counted in years, and that does not help convincing open source projects
to work with us. Our documents are cast for eternity, errors included,
which does not help the part the part of the readership who wants to
implement standards. Implementing our standards involves a treasure hunt
to find how many RFC have to be read before understanding the whole
picture. And that's before we even consider the potential of confusion
between standards, experiments, independent efforts, and drafts. The
IETF community will need to solve that over time. I assume that this
will imply some sharing of the work between the RFC Editor and the
"superstructure" of the IETF, and I wait to see the discussion happening
in the ad hoc working group. And yes, of course the discussion process
should be open and fair.

-- Christian Huitema



On 10/3/2019 12:28 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
> Christian,
>
> I just noticed that I had never responded to your note below.
> It deserves an answer, particularly because I think you have
> identified a key reason why various of us keep talking past each
> other.
>
> Briefly and I hope correctly interpreting your comments, many of
> us believe the RFC Series is an Internet Community resource and
> publication series and that, when ISOC and the IETF took on
> responsibility for it in several stages from the early 1990s
> through 2007, it was doing so as, to use Jon Postel's language
> form quite a different document, a trustee for that larger
> community.  It is obviously reasonable to question that role and
> its ongoing appropriateness and to assert that, e.g., the IESG
> should have control over what is published.  I can certainly
> remember discussions of that issue in 1994.  We had them again
> leading up to the publication of RFCs 4844 through 4846 in 2007,
> and several times in between and subsequently.  I think it is
> safe to say that the community has never been in complete
> agreement since the RFC Editor Function was separately and
> directly funded by the US Government and probably not even
> before then.  I do not, however, see that discussion as "some
> people believe one thing and others believe something else" or
> "whether the RSOC (and, to some extent, the IAB) agrees with my
> understanding of the role and function of the RFC Series".  From
> my point of view, the community was asked that question as part
> of the "RFC++" discussion of somewhat over a year ago and there
> was a fairly clear answer of "not just about the IETF" (both in
> terms of the series and what things were called).  If we
> disagree about that conclusion, then we have another problem.
> But, even if you (and others) believe the outcome of the July
> 2018 discussions was unclear with regard to the function of the
> RFC Series, I think we end up with two issues:
>
> (1) Where the RFC Editor Function is concerned, are the RSOC and
> IAB responsible for fairly interpreting community consensus
> (even if only EITF community consensus) and following it, or can
> they reasonably go off in other directions without any
> accountability to the community?
>
> (2) Given that the RFC++ effort was an attempt to redefine the
> RFC Editor Function at least with regard to how documents are
> named and that it clearly did not get [even] IETF community
> consensus, is it reasonable to use Heather's decision to step
> down at the end of the year (whether that decision came as a
> surprise or was deliberately or accidentally induced) as an
> excuse or mechanism for opening the question of the role of the
> RFC Editor Function again in such a short time?   And, if it is,
> should that question be posed in a balanced way and asked openly
> and specifically rather than partially hidden in the plans for
> replacing Heather (whether temporarily or permanent, etc.).
>
> FWIW, there are many other questions about the RFC Editor
> Function and the RFC Series about which assumptions have been
> made for many years but that sensible people can argue are
> obsolete.  One that has been raised repeatedly (and that the
> RFC++ effort certainly touched on) was whether Independent
> Submissions are still necessary and appropriate given all of the
> other ways by which information that comes out of the IETF can
> be published.   Another is whether the whole idea of archival
> documents is necessary any more.  Recent threads on the
> rfc-interest list lead me to believe that there are several
> members of the community who believe the answer to the latter
> question is "no" or perhaps that the IETF model for
> authoritative clarifications to standards-track documents is in
> need of reopening and reconsideration.
>
> best,
>    john
>
>
>
>
> --On Friday, September 13, 2019 11:00 -0700 Christian Huitema
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> On 9/13/2019 7:44 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
>>
>>> The difficulty, which several people tried to get a
>>> focus on (before IETF 105, at the plenary, and thereafter),
>>> was the question of whether the RSOC (and, to some extent,
>>> the IAB) understood (generally and consistent with community
>>> understanding) the role and function of the RFC Series, the
>>> relationship of the RSE to that function, the appropriate
>>> interpretation of "oversight", some important management and
>>> procurement differences between hiring and management of
>>> high-level professional and, procurement of
>>> easily-substitutable commodity items.
>> John,
>>
>> The way you phrase it, there is an eminent understanding of
>> the role and function of the RFC series and the RSE that
>> everybody should agree on, and you suspect the IAB does not.
>> That why you use the word "understood" in the quoted text. I
>> think that vocabulary presumes the outcome of the ongoing
>> discussion. For example, you and several others including Mike
>> and Brian hold it as obvious that "the RFC series is bigger
>> than the IETF". That was certainly true in 1981, but I am sure
>> there are people who don't believe that in 2019 -- and those
>> people are indeed part of "the community".
>>
>> You may believe that you have a superior understanding, but
>> the correct phrasing would be "the question of whether the
>> RSOC (and, to some extent, the IAB) agrees with my
>> understanding of the role and function of the RFC Series".
>
>
>

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