Dear colleagues,
This is going to be difficult to explain but I have a feeling that the current process of getting to a new structure is somewhat of a layer violation. I think that applying the "standards" process to a management issue is not that efficient.
What I am trying to expand below is: I care about the new structure, but I cannot contribute to the discussion because I just do not have sufficient background and clue to go beyond giving an uninformed opinion. I therefore trust the IETF management to listen to what is said by folk on this list, try to compile the appropriate legal and organizational advice outside the IETF and make a wise decision that they will be able to stand by and that allows me to do my work.
Now for the long version.
In order to produce good standards we have an open procedure, that procedure is there to guarantee that we get good standards that have a wide support and that make the net better.
To be able to do that work we need an organizational infrastructure. Some parts of that infrastructure immediately influence the effectiveness with which we can do our day-to-day work. Examples of these are our interactions with the IESG. Other aspects are a little more distant, the exact organizational structure is one of these things. The more distant these items get from our day to day work the less expertise we have.
Most of us know how to do engineering (that is why we are here), some of us have some project management experience, a smaller subset has management experience, and a very small subset has experience in organizational structures.
The "reorganization" is distant to most off us. And that we can see from the discussion on the IETF mailing list. A small set individuals is involved but the IETF at large does not contribute to the discussion.
The layering violation I see is that we try to apply our standards process to our management process. And I think it does not work, most of us just do not care (given the ratio of lurkers/posters). The contrast between the standard process and this management process is that our standards process relies on the expertise of the collective while the collective does not have experience in organizational restructuring.
I feel comfortable with the "management" taking a decision. I entrust them to do the good thing, and I entrust them to talk to the right people to make the informed decision. The folk that have experience with organizational structures should voice their opinions and I am happy this happens and that alternatives are suggested. However, I can not, without spending hours and hours, make any informed choice on the alternatives. And I think this applies to others. I try not voice an opinion when I have not been able to get an informed opinion.
Openness is a good thing. But do not expect many more people to join and lets hope that this will not turn into by micromanagment by consensus.
--Olaf
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