On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 9:04 PM Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 03-Oct-22 13:17, Keith Moore wrote:
> On 10/2/22 19:55, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
>>
>> I would also like to see a rule that any WG chair who starts off with a statement of the form 'we have to do this in 12 months so we have to do it this way' is automatically booted from the WG 12 months later. Every single time I have seen that used it has been playing dirty pool and none of the WGs has delivered anything of note in four years.
>
> I would instead say that any group that, whether via the charter or the chair, is told "you have to do it this way" should be immediately shut down.
Hang on. There are occasions when the charter is quite restrictive for a good reason connected with the "running code" part of our mantra. For example, I think the original NFS WG was restricted by backwards-compatibility with proprietary NFS. (However, I don't know where I'd look to find the original NFS charter.) In the current DMARC charter it says:
"The working group will seek to preserve interoperability with the
installed base of DMARC systems, and provide detailed justification
for any non-interoperability."
I'm sure there are many other examples, as well as quite a lot of charters referring to a personal I-D as a starting point. So while charters cannot preempt the final rough consensus, they can certainly restrict the starting point.
I have no problem when there is a legitimate reason for picking a particular approach and this is stated up front. Many IETF working groups are started to standardize an existing protocol - S/MIME, OpenPGP, etc. etc.
When I propose an approach two years before a WG is started, then get told that there is 'no time' to consider the approach I took and then seven years after the WG is formed, nine years after I made my proposal, I am reviewing the last call of the RFC taking that approach... well, I come to conclusions, I do, I come to conclusions.
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