The IAOC is requesting feedback from the community concerning a vacancy that the IAOC feels is not adequately covered by existing IETF rules. Marshall Eubanks has been a active IETF participant for many years and a member of the IAOC since 2009. However, he recently stopped participating in the IAOC and Trust. The IAOC has made extensive efforts to contact Marshall about this, but has not received any response. Given the size of the IAOC, a missing member makes it much harder to get a quorum. The specifics of his absence include: - Missed the IAOC calls on 11 October 2012, 10 September 2012, 6 September 2012, 23 August 2012 - No email received from Marshall since 1 August 2012 on the IAOC, IETF Trust, and related private lists. Marshall is subscribed to the IAOC and IETF Trust lists and consequently should have received email discussing regular IAOC/Trust business including email on this topic. We have tried to contact Marshall over this time period using email 14 times, telephone 6 times (leaving messages), SMS messages seven times, Linkedin messages once, Facebook messages once, and registered postal mail twice. We have not received any response from Marshall. It is also our understanding that Marshall has stopped participating in other IETF lists and stopped working on IDs he authored. On 6 September 2012 the IAOC appointed a replacement liaison to the IETF NomCom after learning from the NomCom chair that Marshall had not responded to emails from the NomCom chair. Based on all of this, the IAOC has concluded that Marshall's IAOC position is vacant. The IAOC has reviewed BCP101 and concludes it does not handle this case very well. BCP101 says that if "an IAOC member abrogates his or her duties" the recall process in BCP10/RFC3777 may be used. The specific text is: IAOC members are subject to recall in the event that an IAOC member abrogates his or her duties or acts against the best interests of the IETF community. Any appointed IAOC member, including any appointed by the IAB, IESG, or ISOC Board of Trustees, may be recalled using the recall procedure defined in RFC 3777 [RFC3777]. IAOC members are not, however, subject to recall by the bodies that appointed them. If a vacancy occurs among the appointed members, this is filled by the appointing body for that position according to its procedures. The conditions for determining that a vacancy exist are not well-defined. BCP10/RFC3777 (Section 7) defines a process where a recall petition is signed by 20 NomCom qualified IETFers, the petition is sent to the ISOC President, the ISOC President appoints a recall committee chair, the chair follows normal NomCom procedures to select 20 committee members (this includes a public call for volunteers, max of two per organization, random selection of volunteers, etc.), recall committee investigates, recall committee votes and requires a 3/4 majority to pass the recall. We think this process was not intended to be used when a sitting IAOC, IESG, or IAB member vacates his/her position. We believe that the intended use of this process was for determining whether a member should leave a position who is unwilling to leave and who has harmed the IETF. That is clearly not the case in this situation, to the contrary, we would have preferred Marshall to continue. It doesn't seem appropriate in this case, or when an member is unable to participate due to illness or death. The IAOC believes that it is reasonable to declare Marshall's IAOC position vacant and, therefore, to ask NomCom to fill his position for the remainder of his term (~15 months.) The IAOC is requesting feedback from the community whether it is reasonable to declare Marshall's IAOC position vacant. Responses are solicited by no later than 5 November 2012. If there is not community support for this approach, the IAOC will pursue the BCP10/RFC3777 recall petition path because having a missing member for 15 months significantly effects the operation of the IAOC and IETF Trust. Please send your comments to <ietf@ietf.org>. The IAOC and IETF chairs will review the community feedback and make a determination if there is support for declaring the position vacant. I would add that we all feel very badly for Marshall given his many years of service to the IETF. We really don't understand why he is not responding and are concerned about it. Unfortunately, we don't know what else to do given his lack of response to our many attempts to contact him. Bob Hinden IAOC Chair p.s. A draft is in progress that proposes an update to BCP10/RFC3777 similar to what we propose here to handle how cases of vacancy be handled. The issue applies to the IAB, IESG, and the IAOC. An announcement will be sent when that is available.
