In message <20050809204911.GA10575@xxxxxxxxx>, "Theodore Ts'o" writes: >On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 03:41:42PM -0500, Spencer Dawkins wrote: >> Hi, Ted, >> >> (offlist) - the current NOMCOM chair posted to the IETF list that for >> two AD positions this cycle, there were only two candidates, and for a >> third position, there were only three. >> >> Are you saying that we may not be able to get even that many candidates >> who are willing to serve, if we ask ADs to provide project management? > >If we forbid AD's from making any technical contributions, but to only >serve as process managers and as project managers and nothing more >than that? Yeah, I would be concerned about whether we would be able >to find people willing to volunteer to do nothing but that. > I can guarantee that if my primary responsibility when I was Security AD was process and project management, there's no way I'd ever have taken the position. Rather, I was willing to serve because it was a way in which I could have more leverage as a security specialist. I should add that an AD has to walk a very fine line in making technical contributions; such contributions are often taken as having far greater weight than they should, because of the obvious possibility of a DISCUSS later on. Every AD knows this, of course -- how often have you seen a comment prefaced by "AD hat off" or equivalent? Let me give a concrete example. At one point in the development of AAA, there was a lot of discussion about the need for proxies. Now, from a security perspective I think proxies are a bad idea, for reasons I outlined in my plenary talk. But I had to be very circumspect in how I said this in the WG -- the issue was by no means clear-cut enough that I felt entitled to force the issue with the threat, implicit or explicit, of a DISCUSS. --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf