(Responding to this message because it is convenient and shortening it considerably) --On Sunday, November 14, 2021 12:41 +0000 "Eric Vyncke (evyncke)" <evyncke=40cisco.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >... > There are also some sensitive BoFs or WGs where impartial / > neutral and experimented chairs are really required for > efficiency. > > As a side note, it is also difficult to find a chair: some > public 'job offering' emails have not always received > replies... It seems that some areas or some WG are more > attractive than others ;-) >... I am confused by this thread, so a few observations. They come at least partially from the perspective of someone who involvement with the ARPANET and Internet and Internet/ARPANET protocol design predates all but a handful of today's active IETF participants and who would certainly qualify for exclusion my most criteria similar to those I understand Rich to be suggesting. First, I have been unwilling to be sole chair of a WG for a long time. My reasoning is not to specifically avoid excluding newcomers but to make room for them and encourage them to come in and get the experience with the clear understanding that they will have a co-chair who can led support, mentor (or whatever the preferred term is today), etc., as needed. I think having a policy that people with long experience, or who (as a metaphor, not a sexist comment) are getting long and white in the beard, as the only chairs or co-chairs of a WG is a good idea and that, even if the IESG does not adopt it, those of us in that category should resist those situations. We also tried the idea for a while of having an "area advisor" for some or many WGs -- not a document shepherd but a sort of assistant co-chair responsible to the AD(s) and quite explicitly with that support and advisory role. I don't know that it was ever dropped --it just sort of faded out of sight, perhaps because someone decided that the needed tooling was not worth it (for a case like that it would be about as bad an excuse as I've heard). As to at least part of the IPR issues, I suggest that, in deciding whether to approve formation of a WG (or allow it to continue), if the IESG cannot find chairs (and participants) that represent different interests and points of view, it is time to ask hard questions about what value the IETF process would add to whatever is being proposed. We should not be in the business of making protocols that are intended to be proprietary better. More important, the best-documented area in which SDOs have gotten into serious anti-trust/ competitiveness problems has involved a company or cluster of interests standardizing something in a way that blocks products (or puts them at a significant disadvantage) from other organizations from competing fairly. However, with the exception of that last issue, there are exceptions to everything. There might be an occasion where the only way to get a WG to focus and reach rough consensus involves having a very senior (sole) chair whom everyone respects and who no one is going to try to drag into petty jockeying for position (I can remember at least one case where that was very important to the success of the group). So, this is another area where I don't believe in rigid rules. But guidelines and principles that generally do not permit very senior people to lead WGs on their own and that favor those people assume support, education, and training roles rather than leadership ones are, IMO, good ideas, not only making room for newer people in leadership roles but making such that those more junior people have the support needed to succeed (and feel confident enough about that to volunteer or respond to arm-twisting). best, john
