> > Why can't we elect the WG chairs? Why can't we elect the ADs? > ... > > When the IETF pays for the 60% (80%, 100%, take your pick) of > an AD's salary, they can elect ADs. Unfortunately, the > current system is heavily biased towards keeping existing ADs > - who, like career politicians, can secure financial support > from their employers for continued participation based on > their current position. Perhaps it's time for term limits ;-) I have two problems with the current situation, the first is that the ADs have very much less authority than their role requires. It is simply not possible to have authority without accountability and the whole point of NOMCON is to ensure that no AD or IAB member is ever accountable to anyone. The committee that appoints them will not be the committee that reappoints them. The second is that there is no way for the membership to tell the IESG and IAB that they should stop dealling in the minutiae and instead focus on the real problems facing the Internet which have nothing to do with whether a draft that will soon be forgotten is well written or not. I want the IAB to be giving architectural leadership. The only way that is going to happen is if people who are writing specifications feel that they have a stake in the IAB decision making process. Architectural advice is not very useful when it amounts to 'don't do it your way' and the alternative is dependent on deployment of an entire new infrastructure like DNSSEC, IPv6 or even deployment of new DNS RRs. There is a complete discontinuity in the style of 1980s era IETF architecure and present day IETF architecure . In the 1980s era the architectures were designed to empower and encourage experimentation. Today everyone seems to have lost their nerve, the thing is too big and too scary to risk breaking. So instead of there being an empowerment process there is a gating process and the IESG considers its role as being a gatekeeper. The Web is successful because it is designed to circumvent authority and gatekeepers, including its creators. Everything is a URI, there are no registries of magic numbers whose permission has to be obtained. At present the IAB is trying to promote an internet architecture in which each new application of the DNS will require deployment of new DNS servers. It's an entirely impractical architecture that is being rejected in favor of various ad-hoc TXT records. The principled architectural approach here would be to propose one off changes to the DNS that would eliminate the need for new RR deployments in the future. But that would result in a loss of control and so instead we have the ridiculous situation in which everyone uses a TXT record in the sure and certain knowledge that this will be the mechanism that is used in perpetuity but also requests a DNS RR which they know will never replace the TXT hack and whose only real point is to get the drafts past the IESG gatekeeper. The result is the worst of all worlds, there is neither control nor architecture. Each protocol will implement TXT security policy records slightly differently. What could have been a principled architecture becomes an ad hoc one that is used in practice and an ideal one that like IPv6 everyone will pay lip service to the theoretical benefits of without taking the action necessary to deploy. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf