--On Tuesday, 25 July, 2006 16:49 -0700 Ted Hardie
<hardie@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 7:25 PM -0400 7/25/06, John C Klensin wrote:
>> And the IETF/IASA can issue an RFP for IETF
>> publications and publishing any time it likes, specifying
>> whatever conditions it likes. _That_ is perfectly normal. It
>> can even try to specify what other activities an entity that
>> responds to the RFP may or may not engage in. That would
>> likely be stupid, since it would probably reduce the number
>> of bidders and increase costs, but nothing prevents "the
>> IETF" from doing so.
>>
>> What it cannot do is to assume it has the right to impose
>> those requirements on the RFC Editor and that, if the RFC
>> Editor doesn't agree, the IETF's remedies extend beyond
>> taking its publication business elsewhere. Absent figuring
>> out who or what the term "RFC Editor" belongs to (I don't
>> know whether it is ISI, but is certainly is not the IETF
>> unless I get to transfer your name after buying you lunch),
>> the RFP should be titled something more like "... for
>> services currently performed by the RFC Editor...".
>
> John,
> Leaving aside all of the naming issues, I believe the point
> that is being missed is that ISOC, through this IASA process,
> intends to fund two things: an "IETF" stream of documents and
> an "independent" stream. It can put conditions on the
> "independent" stream solely because it will pay for the
> publication of that stream. As you point out, that has
> nothing to do with any publication work done for anyone else
> by the respondents; it simply means that for the "independent"
> stream paid for by ISOC, a particular set of processes are
> being put forward to ensure that they relate to the "IETF"
> stream (or don't relate to it) in particular ways. I would
> appreciate it if we kept that point, and what the "particular
> set of processes" should be, separate from the naming issue.
> The worms in one can need not interbreed with the worms in the
> other.
Ted,
Omitting the issues about IAB and IAOC relationships that have
been more than adequately covered by others...
I, too, would like to keep these worms independent. However,
there is a point of interaction and it was an apparent step in
the direction of passing that point that caused me to write my
note.
Things are getting a little too intertwined here, to the point
that I think we are having trouble keeping things separated that
ought to be separate. During the IASA development process, it
was made very clear that, if ISOC did not follow IASA/IOAC
direction on IETF matters, we would "fire" ISOC. We also
discussed all sorts of mechanisms to keep the IASA responsive to
the needs and desires of the IETF and picked a few of them.
Independently, we have many times observed situations in which
the IESG feels that it is justified making statements on behalf
of the IETF (for the record, I believe that for some, but not
all, of those situations the conclusion is reasonable).
Given those actual or imagined chains of authority, it doesn't
take very many steps to get to "the IESG can tell ISOC what to
write into and 'RFC Editor' RFP and can tell the IAOC how to
interpret that contract". That is a problem because some of us
who believe in independent submissions believe that the first
and most important thing they should be independent of IESG
consensus.
If the IASA is going to issue an RFP that contains an
"independent submission" model that really is independent, i.e.,
along the lines outlined in draft-klensin-rfc-independent, then
I hope and trust that we will have no problem.
At the other extreme, suppose that the IASA (or ISOC), at the
direction of :the IETF" (i.e., the IESG, with or without a
consensus call), issued an RFC that called for an "independent"
stream with conditions placed upon it that permitted the IESG,
without formally consulting the IETF community, to block or
indefinitely delay documents and mandate that any text it liked
was to be put in documents that were published. There would
then be some question as to whether the entity for which the
ISOC was requesting bids could properly be known as "the RFC
Editor" and that might well raise the naming problem.
Or there could be questions about whether ISOC was actually
acting in the best interests of the Internet Community -- their
BoT has responsibilities to communities other than IETF and
IASA. Some of us might then feel that ISOC really should be
generating as issuing this RFP -- not on behalf of IASA, but on
behalf of the Internet Community, with the IASA requirements
governing the IETF (and, at the option of the IAB, the IAB and
IRTF) streams, but with the independent stream handled
separately and overseen by an ISOC-coordinated entity.
None of these are places I want to go. They would be
inefficient and they would create additional distinctions that
would be hard to maintain without friction. But the further the
folks who are convinced that "independent submission" really
means "as long as the IESG likes their content" or "second or
third-class citizens", the closer we get to the point at which
the naming issues and, more broadly, issues of authority to
issue the RFP at all, become relevant.
john
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