Re: [vwrap] Status and future of the VWRAP working group

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

I have no time this week, during IETF week, to respond in detail.  And
I'll be on vacation next week.  I'll try to give a full response when
I get back home, after 8 April.  But something quick now:

> Notwithstanding that the IETF places certain duties on Barry and others to
> ensure that there is visible progress in the form of documents, I must say
> that "documents at all costs" is not a particularly good way of achieving
> technical progress.

So people don't misunderstand, here:  documents are what the IETF
produces.  Therefore, in the end, we need to have documents.  On the
way there, we need to see progress.  We ultimately measure progress by
finished documents, and sometimes measure progress along the way by
progress on documents.  Productive discussion is good, too.

Don't interpret from this that the only thing I or the ADs care about
are getting documents cranked out "at all costs".  The problem is that
we haven't had any progress in a long time, and we need to push things
along.  We can talk forever; I know that.  That talk *eventually* has
to turn into documents, or we might as well close the working group
and just let people chat on the mailing list.

That's why I'm pushing for some visible progress on at least one
document, the introduction/overview one.  I'm not suggesting that we
should be posting documents with individual opinions, at the expense
of group consensus.  What I'm saying is that if, as a group, we can't
talk a bit, tease consensus out of that, write that consensus down,
and post it as a draft proposal... then we're being ineffective.

There's enough going on here that we're not going to shut things down
on 10 April because nothing's been posted.

That said, we need to be leading this discussion on consensus that can
be documented and posted.  And we need to focus on that and accomplish
it soon, for a vague but near-term value of "soon".

Barry, as chair
(Now, my attention is back to the PLASMA BoF....)