On 12 Oct 2020, at 19:00, Jay Daley wrote:
2. RFC 8711 is clear about the role of the LLC that "It has no
authority over the standards development activities of the IETF",
which is taken to mean that there should be a bright line between the
work of the LLC and the standards process.
Correct me if I'm wrong Jay, but this sounds to me like the LLC (board
and ED) are trying to come up with a policy that instantiates the first
paragraph of section 4.3 of RFC 8711:
4.3. General IETF LLC Responsibilities
The IETF LLC is established to provide administrative support to the
IETF. It has no authority over the standards development activities
of the IETF.
and is trying to enumerate what it needs to do (or, more likely, needs
not to do) to avoid running afoul of having "authority of the standards
development activities".
I have always taken that admonition to mean that when the LLC engages in
its enumerated responsibilities (Operations, Finances, Fundraising, and
Compliance), none of those activities take precedence over the RFC 2026
processes without amendment of those processes by the IETF community
through normal rough consensus means. So, obviously the LLC may not say
to the IESG, "Company X has been a generous sponsor, and therefore you
should approve a document that Company X favors." That would be pretty
egregious. But it's also not OK for the LLC to decide, "We think
document review and determination of consensus would go much better with
this cool new voting tool, which we've decided to deploy." The LLC must
not (as the LLC) drive a change in the consensus determination process
by introducing or requiring a new tool; the process change must be
driven from the IETF community and a new tool or functionality requested
from there through the IESG.[1]
Perhaps others have suggestions for how the LLC ought write down this
limitation in the form of a policy, should the LLC feel that it needs
one for itself. But overall, this seems based on a misunderstanding (or
perhaps over-interpretation) of that line in 8711. I think it is
important for the LLC to be clear about what that line means and to
execute accordingly, but the policy as presented doesn't get it right.
pr
[1] As others have said, none of this requires that LLC board members or
employees should not participate as individuals, just as employees of
big donor Company X above do; they just all must go in with the
understanding that they participate as individuals and make clear their
potentials COIs if they choose to do so. As others have said, their
input will be judged on the merits.
--
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best
