Eliot,
I'm obviously not being successful at explaining what I'm
concerned about it and my getting this deeply drawn into this
whole discussion violates a promise I made to myself some time
ago, which was to concentrate my IETF time on only those things
in which I had a strong technical interest and was convinced
would go somewhere. So, having posted the "clerk's office"
note, which I think ought to be much more relevant and important
than this one, I give up. Three parting observations:
(1) I actually agree with the conclusion that seems to
be emerging. I am worried, deeply, about means and
process, not about ends and results.
(2) The Nomcom process is good for many things, but has
repeatedly and convincingly demonstrated that it is not
effective in "curing" the IESG or IAB of particular
forms of bad behavior. It has been especially
ineffective at curing behavior consistent with the
belief that the "leadership" is in control of the
organization rather than a reflector, facilitator, and
determiner of consensus. That is either a problem or
not, depending on whether we care: it has often been
observed that most organizations end up with the
leadership they deserve, regardless of the selection
mechanisms used to pick them.
(3) We claim to not believe in voting or Kings, but in
rough consensus, running code, and an extremely open
process. So we are trying to make decisions by counting
"votes" in not-particularly-well-crafted polls. The
IAB and IESG continue to appoint secret (i.e., not
announced and minuted) committees to hold secret (i.e.,
not announced in advance to the community) meetings,
despite promises in San Diego that this would stop. And
I think you and others are arguing, with the very best
of intentions, that leadership groups, who have not been
selected using criteria that include qualifications
needed to make these sorts of administrative/legal
decisions, and who have never been authorized by the
community to do so, should now go off and make precisely
those decisions -- decisions that might include options
with which the IETF community has no experience and
which the experience of other bodies has proven very
poor.
Especially about the third issue, I see serious contradictions
with what we claim to be our principles and with what
distinguishes the IETF from the typical, goer-dominated,
"procedures are more important than content", standards body. I
think that is far more serious than the outcome of these
particular "decisions". If we change things by giving up the
"no voting", "no kings", "rough _community_ consensus", and
"openness" principles and start ignoring experience comparable
to running code (or the lack thereof) in favor of ideological
arguments, then the particular experiment that is the IETF
itself is over, regardless of what particular decisions are made
in this case and regardless of how long "over" takes to become
obvious.
I wish I were wrong, but I'm just out of energy for these
particular windmills.
john
--On Sunday, 03 October, 2004 15:54 +0200 Eliot Lear
<lear@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> John,
>
> I agree with you that there is reason to be concerned about a
> group of technical people who are not lawyers having to make
> decisions about the organization. However, I don't see delay
> at this point in time assisting our cause. In fact, the
> general membership of the IETF (whatever that means) has very
> few lawyers, and probably very few MBAs. One would have to
> wait a LONG time for community consensus. As it is I question
> the validity of the poll answers simply based on the
> qualifications of the respondents to answer. Rather I hope
> that the considerably smaller group has been consulting
> subject matter experts on the best ways to go forward.
>
> As I responded to Margaret, if you want me to lawyer up, fine
> but that costs time and quite frankly which one of 0 or M (or
> any other) gets chosen doesn't seem worth waiting. That a
> decision gets made by people we in fact empowered through the
> NOMCOM process (the IAB & IESG) seems to me more important.
> If you do not like the decision you have every right to make
> your displeasure known to the NOMCOM. And If the
> [Ll]eadership of this organization screws up badly enough, the
> Internet Community *WILL* route around the damage. It's
> happened before. That's how W3C came to be.
>
> Eliot
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