On 12/12/04 at 10:44 AM -0500, John C Klensin wrote:
... I want to repeat that my one of my two main concerns is less with your note than with the concern that we are focusing our risk analysis and protection mechanisms in the wrong place.
So, this part of the concern basically comes down to a broader complaint about the IESG and/or IAB not following our rules, and extends well beyond the AdminRest discussion. I'm not going to argue with you about that. I probably agree with you on a host of topics in this area. And perhaps that needs to be accounted for in the document more than worrying about this thing about ISOC. But I do take it as a separate issue and doesn't say anything about whether we should go ahead with this idea. (That there are electrical problems in my house does not mean that I should fix the plumbing issues.)
Suppose you had said
"It is unreasonable for the IETF to require a whole BCP-approval and publication process to unwind, while ISOC would require only a majority vote. We need to work out a model with ISOC that requires a more serious process, perhaps a supermajority vote."
Despite some concern about a focus on the wrong risks (see above), you probably would have heard nothing from me. Or perhaps you would have heard a suggestion that maybe a single Board vote might not be sufficient and that something else...
Fair enough. I was (honestly) just coming up with what seemed to me an obvious suggestion about how to do such a thing and had not intended to say, "a by-law change or take a hike". It seemed like a straightforward (and legally assured way) to get something like a super-majority vote. If the ISOC Board suggests something with the similar features, I'm more than happy to take them up on that.
That is consistent with the sort of partnership I think we should be looking for here and which I think the community more or less signed off on in moving toward Scenario O.
But your note doesn't seem to say that. Instead, it seemed to say, at least in my reading, "we should not let this go through unless ISOC agrees to Bylaws changes that are dictated by the IETF". I don't know what the implied "or else" clause is, unless someone is looking for an excuse to return to Scenario C, certainly we won't give up on reorganizing entirely if they don't.
I don't want to see ISOC dictating anything to the IETF. I don't want the IETF dictating anything to ISOC.
[...]
If, as I have been saying for many months, we treat each other as hostile parties rather than as partners working together for common ends we both value, this just isn't going to work, no matter what words we get on paper.
This (and statements like it that I've heard from one or two other folks) continue to baffle me.
1. Please don't attribute motives to me. I have no intention of "dictating terms" to ISOC about how this should go. To up-level as you did before: I find concrete suggestions for a path forward much more productive than "I think we should do something that accomplishes such-and-so. Does anyone have any ideas about how to proceed?" My intention in suggesting the by-law change was to give a concrete proposal of something that would address my concern. Nothing more. And I'm not looking to return to Scenario C, nor have I even considered an "or else" clause. My feeling was we'd be able to come to some mutually satisfactory way to address my concerns.
2. I find this talk of "hostile parties" just incomprehensible, and I know other people who I've spoken to and who agree with my desires about assuring ISOC commitment have expressed the same thing to me: We are formalizing a relationship. That's not hostility; it's just prudent behavior. I find your reaction (and that of others) similar to friends who get into a business relationship and then get all bent-out-of-shape because one asks the other to sign a contract. It's not about distrust. It's not about it being "less romantic". (I personally think people who don't understand that marriage is, among other things, a legal contract with the state and act accordingly are just being stupid.) It's that you don't know what's going to happen in the future and you just cover your bases. And unlike friends, who are the same persons now and into the future, two organizations whose members will change into the future have every reason to make sure that the people who had good will in the first place have their desires continued when they're not around anymore.
I genuinely like everyone I've talked to on the ISOC Board. They seem on the up-and-up about all of this and I have no worries about any of them doing something silly. But I would love to see some way for them to say, "Even if a handful of bozos make it on to the board, they'd be hard pressed to change what we've done here when we are all friends." (And to wit: If you and others think that there is a serious problem with the IESG and IAB changing the rules out from under this BCP, I think you would be nuts not to try to get some backstop measures into the BCP.)
pr -- Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/> QUALCOMM Incorporated
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