On 11 March 2015, the IESG received an appeal from JFC Morfin <https://www.ietf.org/iesg/appeal/morfin-2015-03-11.pdf> concerning its approval of the "draft-ietf-ianaplan-icg-response." Below is the IESG's response to that appeal: The IESG interprets the appeal as having two elements: one is largely focused on making comments about the IANAPLAN document and the other is asking questions about what the consensus on the document means. The IESG notes that appeals are not a supplement to participation in the working group, and that the appellant did, in fact participate in the working group process. We recognize that the appellant is seeking to make a precautionary appeal as stated at the beginning of the appeal text. The IESG considers that the RFC 2026 appeals process is only available for handling actions that have already been performed, and that appeals cannot be used to develop questions about potential future actions or outcomes. The IESG further notes that appeals of this length, and appeals that use novel and/or unfamiliar terminology and expect readers to understand it are not helpful to the process. We strongly encourage appellants to be brief, clear, and to the point. The actionable substance of the appeal appears to be that the consensus on the IANAPLAN document is in question because (1) the appellant was not given proper consideration by the working group, and (2) organizations, such as IEEE, W3C and other lesser known organisations were not included and given consideration. The appellant also calls the working group charter into question, but he has brought charter issues up before and there has been no consensus to make changes in response to those issues, and the time is well past for appeals related to the content of the charter: the charter approval was announced on 8 September, 2014, so the two-month period specified in Section 6.5.4 of RFC 2026 ended in early November. The IANAPLAN working group, in common with other IETF working groups and according to IETF process, considers input according to the issues and arguments raised, not favoring input from organizations (through liaisons) over input from individuals, and allowing all contributions to be made via the working group mailing list. Announcements of the working group's charter were made, as is usual, on the ietf-announce and new-work mailing lists, to ensure that individuals from all organizations could be informed of the work and participants were solicited in that manner. Quite a number of individuals have participated as a result of that solicitation. Further, some organizations have given input through formal liaison channels. It is the IESG's judgment that the process has been followed correctly in this regard. It is the IESG's judgment, having reviewed the working group's email archive, that Mr Morfin had significant participation in the working group, that his input was considered, and that where he was not satisfied with the result, it was not because he was ignored. The appellant also notes that because there is a PR action preventing him from posting to the IETF discussion list, he could not participate in the last call of the document. Yet the last call notice says that "Exceptionally, comments may be sent to iesg@ietf.org instead." Mr Morfin could well have participated in last call through that means, and did not. He also does not cite any issues that were discussed during last call that he was barred from commenting on. The IESG, therefore, considers that all individuals and organizations were given the opportunity to contribute to the discussion according to normal IETF processes, that no person or organization was denied the ability to contribute, and that all contributions received were properly handled and considered. Consequently, the IESG denies this appeal. The IESG further notes that the IANAPLAN document is very clear about what the scope of the document is, and that it is specifically in response to the request for input from the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG). No further scope is implied nor can be inferred.
