After Kobe, the IETF established the IESG and IAB as twin
oversight bodies with some responsibility to look after
the overall technical health of the Internet, especially
the important parts.
Bob,
As I recall, you were on the IAB that was deposed after the Kobe revolt. I
use such a strong word because that really is what happened, and it took some
years for the IAB to find its role as architectural staff experts for IETF
work. (In the last couple of years, it has moved increasingly into
line-management issues, thereby completely muddling its role as appeal court
for challenged IESG decisions.)
I was on the IESG that inherited the responsibilities from the Kobe change.
Your characterization of what happened is completely different from my
experience of it.
Before Kobe, the IAB operated in a relatively parental manner, with periodic
and unpredictable late-stage rejection of lengthy working group output. Not
surprisingly, this engendered considerable and deep dissatisfaction among the
IETF community. Kobe, therefore, was merely the final straw.
Prior to Kobe, the IESG operated as a toothless facilitator of process. Area
Directors sought to offer advice to working groups and to keep the IAB happy.
The job had an impressive degree of insecurity, given the worries of
offending working groups or the IAB.
Kobe resulted in exactly one change in the daily operation of the IETF:
Authority to approve working group documents
was moved from the IAB to the IESG.
That is it! There was no other operational change. No grand philosophy. No
re-specification of the nature of the work being done.
The only other change -- and it was a big one -- was creation of nomcom and
the regular review and selection it provides.
Nothing like "responsibility to look after the overall technical health of the
Internet" was assigned to the IESG.
However it certainly does appear that that is the role it has arrogated to itself.
Unfortunately, it is a frankly pretentious role to attempt:
a) the IESG does not do the work of creating specifications and it has
demonstrated no power to create that work; initiatives and work come from the
community; and
b) the IESG cannot enforce this supposed responsibility; the only people
who can assert real "responsibility" for the technical health of the Internet
are those that compose the Internet technical community in its entirety. With
respect to IETF-related work, that is the entire IETF community, not a
selected subset.
What that selected subset CAN do is to raise issues with
the community and assess community consensus about those
issues.
These are not trivial tasks.
Knowing when to raise an issue requires quite a bit of expertise. So for
example, the technical concerns from Larry Roberts' request come from
significant expertise.
The problem is with believing that that expertise imparts authority to make an
approval/rejection decision, rather than imparting the ability to prompt
community review of the request.
As others keep pointing out, the IESG -- and for that matter the IETF -- has
no power to prevent development, operations or use decisions. Those occur
outside the IETF.
The IESG and the IETF has power only through its ability to pursuade. To
recruit rough consensus.
Pursuasion is very different power and process than decison-making "authority".
--
d/
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
+1.408.246.8253
dcrocker a t ...
WE'VE MOVED to: www.bbiw.net
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