Dave,
We have a long history of looking at the same data and analysis and reaching different conclusions and of looking at different data and analysis and reaching similar conclusions. Since we have both been critical of aspects of this process, let me agree with you about part of it but supply some different data about the rest in the hope we can come closer together.
--On Monday, October 04, 2004 9:10 PM -0700 Dave Crocker <dhc2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
... 1. Nothing about the reorganization is going to make IETF standards be more useful or be produced significantly more quickly. Hence, reorganization has nothing to do with the really serious threats to IETF long-term survival.
Arguably not true. The present organizational structure and its consequences are sufficient to block some changes that really might improve the efficiency of the process. It is a separate set of questions as to whether we prefer those changes and the accompanying risks to slogging through with our current arrangements (see my note on the "Clerk" function), but it is clear that the current organizational structure would block any such changes. See below for more on this.
2. The current sense of crisis has mostly come from a loss of revenue. Nothing about the reorganization will necessarily fix that.
Having participated in the "AdminRest" activity and the investigations that surrounded it, I don't think this is true. The current sense of crisis derives, IMO, primarily from four factors:
* the inability to move funds from one source and category to another (to be specific, there is no way to move money derived from meeting fees into efforts other than the CNRI/Foretec-operated secretariat or to move money from ISOC revenues and contributions into that secretariat), * seemingly-unresolveable inability of the IETF leadership and community to understand where one of those sources/ pools of money are going (to be specific about one example, the IETF has been completely unsuccessful in getting information about where "overhead" being charged by CNRI/Foretec goes and how that overhead rate is determined), * apparent inability of the CNRI/Foretec Secretariat to work with the IETF leadership to develop new ways of doing things or even to do the existing, historical, tasks as well as they were being done a half-dozen years ago (to be specific about a few examples, it is my understanding that every recent proposal for change or improvement from the IESG or IAB has been greeted with an indication that it is impossible to think about such things without additional revenues, presumably from meeting fees. The community has seen other symptoms. For example, meeting dates and locations are being nailed down less than six months in advance, not the 18-24 months which the community has repeatedly requested. We are also seeing an apparent inability to keep lists like IETF-Announce to extremely limited access for posting (not exactly rocket science)). There are far more serious symptoms: lost documents, delayed protocol action announcements, and many other problems in document handling and processing, which are occasionally visible to document editors and WG chairs but, by the nature of their oversight/management role, every instance is visible to the IESG and they have to deal with them every day. * and, of course, there are some issues about finances going forward, but the present organizational structure and relationships have prevented engaging those in any serious ways.
3. The rest of the sense of crisis is due to interaction problems between some people in IETF leadership and some people in the organizations that the IETF uses for services. Nothing in the reorganization is certain to improve any of that, especially since we do not have precise statements of work for them. (There is a rather mystical sense that the reorganization will fix these issues, but in fact nothing in the simplistic, superficial way that we are proceeding should give us any sense that that improvement is likely. Quite the opposite.)
Here we partially agree. There is some risk, given the current reorganization process and model, that we will succeed in recreating the present situation with a secretariat function that doesn't work well in some ways, including being unresponsive relative to IESG/IAB expectations. However, many of the problems with the current relationship stem from very different assumptions, derived from history, about who has ultimate decision authority. The IETF view is that ultimate authority for determining the best interests of the IETF and the Internet rests exclusively in the IETF leadership, representing the consensus of IETF participants. The CNRI view seems to be that this ultimate authority rests with CRNI, because of their founding role, their experience with relationships external to the IETF, and their greater experience and longer view of a variety of matters. Regardless of which point of view one sympathizes with, the gulf between those points of view is fairly significant.
4. Most of the reorganization process has been pursued with partial statements, incomplete plans, and assertions of urgency. It certainly has not been conducted in a way that attended to concerns as they were raised. Quite the opposite.
Indeed. I'd go a bit further in comparing this to our processes and history of developing specifications. Somewhat over a decade ago, we discovered that the IAB had gotten out of touch with the community and, more important, had begun to substitute their judgment for that of the community and to assert their right and responsibility to do so. The Kobe incident was part of a series, not a unique event. The community's response was to change the way people were appointed to the IAB and IESG and to remove most authority from the former. The hope was that this would fix the problem. Well, we are arguably seeing the same symptoms again (with the body to whom we gave that authority and, to a somewhat lesser degree, with some members of the IAB), although more dramatically and clearly with the admin issues than with standards. That said, the problem identification effort turned up a number of things that might suggest the same problems in the standards process side of the house.
So the view that "delay" will not assist us amounts to a statement that we should not worry about the considerable range of serious problems in how we have been pursuing organization, or with our community ignorance about what we are doing, but we should charge ahead (blindly) just to get it over with.
We agree about that too.
In a subsequent note, you wrote...
My point was that the level of naivete and irrationality that underlie this reorganization process would never be tolerated in any serious design effort for specifications.
So I was not talking about "rules".
I was talking about being deliberate, constructive risk-averse.
There I think we are making progress, although one could doubt the efficiency of the mechanisms. Certainly Scenario O represents a better risk balance than Scenario C, regardless of how we have gotten there.
best,
john
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