In the email below, the GEOPRIV chairs express serious concerns about
the process surrounding the GEOPRIV meeting at IETF 68 in Prague. In
particular, they allege:
- That improper meetings occurred between the ADs and the working
group participants and that this "potentially harmed the integrity
and transparency of GEOPRIV and the IETF"
- That there was "the appearance that there may have been an attempt
to manipulate IETF process to hold and predetermine the outcome of
consensus calls" on the part of the Area Directors.
In the first place, the Area Directors take these concerns, and grave
allegations, very seriously. Area Directors who manipulate schedules
and agendas in order to predetermine the outcome of consensus calls
should, in our opinion, be summarily recalled, and if the GEOPRIV
working group chairs believe this transpired in IETF 68, we urge them
to pursue such a recourse. While we speak to the particulars in
detail below, in short we believe that our efforts before, during and
after the GEOPRIV meeting at IETF 68 were limited to encouraging a
set of participants to arrive at a consensus which was long overdue,
and did not extend to steering said consensus in any particular
direction. In this regard we do not believe we overstepped our
bounds, either in the letter or the spirit of the process.
As indicated in my message of March 25, we agree with the GEOPRIV
chairs that the hums taken in prague need to be confirmed on the
mailing list. As we all know, the contents of a room in Prague are
not equivalent to an IETF working group; only formal decisions of
this mailing list are definitive for the working group. Too often
working group minutes are published and completely ignored, which
only leads to further discord down the road when participants resist
that to which they are presumed to have assented. This is
particularly important in this case because opinion in the room was
so closely divided. So in the interests of making progress, please do
review the results of Prague carefully!
To the particular concerns of the GEOPRIV chairs:
<> Agenda: The Area Directors did meet privately with members of the
GEOPRIV working group prior to the meeting at IETF 68. Indeed, we met
with as many stakeholders as possible, specifically to ascertain how
the group could move forward on a set of contentious issues which had
been unresolved for some time. In the course of these meetings we
solicited input on how progress could be made at the meeting, and
strongly encouraged working group members to find a path to
consensus. We came to believe that focusing on core issues that were
impeding progress, such as the longstanding disagreement on an HTTP-
based Layer 7 Location Configuration Protocol (henceforth L7LCP)
rather than ancillary issues like location signing, would be the best
use of working group facetime.
While it is certainly true that the Area Directors knew they wanted
to use the agenda time in GEOPRIV to make progress on core issues, if
necessary at the expense of existing agenda items, there was no
concrete agenda to that effect privately circulated prior to the
meeting, verbally or in writing, to our knowledge. In fact, the
agenda was bashed at the start of the GEOPRIV meeting by a
participant, albeit one whose counsel on making progress the Area
Directors had sought prior to the meeting. Critically, that agenda
bash was vetted by the room, as any other agenda bash would be - this
was not a change made by fiat of the Area Directors. We strongly
believe that there was a will in the room to prioritize and resolve
the issues which were bashed onto the agenda. We furthermore took
specific hums about the preparedness of the group to make decisions
about these issues, which under the circumstances were required to
proceed.
<> Scheduling: There certainly were irregularities with the
scheduling of the GEOPRIV meeting at IETF 68. That much said,
scheduling the meeting track for the RAI Area is infamous, and last
minute changes in timeslot are hardly unheard of (we had a similar
one at the previous IETF). In this instance, the scheduling problem
was ultimately caused by the unavailability of working group chairs.
Two of the three GEOPRIV chairs, and one of the two SPEERMINT chairs,
were unable to attend IETF 68 at all. It transpired that the
SPEERMINT chair who could attend was unable to make the SPEERMINT
timeslot due to a family obligation elsewhere in the world. As the
GEOPRIV chairs note below, Henning Schulzrinne had previously been
identified as a stand-in co-chair for GEOPRIV. We were thus left with
the prospect of seeing SPEERMINT go forward with no available chairs,
versus GEOPRIV going forward with at least one previously identified
stand-in chair. We thus made a last minute decision to find the
lesser of two evils by swapping the timeslots of the groups. This was
a decision made at the last minute to find the lesser of two evils.
We certainly didn't anticipate all of the ramifications this change
would have in terms of attendance, and in retrospect, we may not have
made the most best choice. The choice was not, however, motivated by
a desire to prevent participants from attending either meeting.
<> Consensus calls: There were indeed quite a few hums taken in the
GEOPRIV room in Prague. In fact, the manner in which the meeting was
run with regard to hums was not typical for this group - hums were
used liberally to hone in on areas where there was, and was not,
consensus. That much said, not all of the hums were consensus calls
on working group issues; quite a few hums were also taken on how we
should proceed, for example (taken from the minutes):
- HUM : Are you informed enough to make this choice
- HUM: Is it important to solve that today
- HUM: Will the group accept a plurality for the decision?
This last hum in particular represented an unusual step, as the
GEOPRIV chairs note. It was a step recommended by the author of
RFC3929 (a document on "alternative decision making processes for
consensus-blocked decisions") when we asked him how we might proceed.
We resorted to this step because the room felt (based on a previous
hum) that it was important to walk away from the meeting with a
resolution. To one particular point:
Cullen Jennings both called the consensus
and cast the last and tie-breaking vote in the room.
We feel it is important to clarify that Cullen Jennings did not call
the consensus in the room. Rather, both Cullen and Ted Hardie were
independently counting the tallies for the plurality in the room (two
counters were used for redundancy, with the side effect that
presumably we eliminated any chance of partiality); it was in fact
Jon Peterson as chair who called the consensus, on the basis of those
reported tallies. Furthermore, although Cullen Jennings did cast a
vote when the count in the room was completed and discovered to
result in a tie, this was not the tie-breaking vote for the purposes
of determining consensus. In fact, votes from the Jabber room
determined the plurality, and the resulting tally did not favor the
option for which Cullen had voted. To the charge that
one of the hums was called on a question not described
in an existing Internet-Draft.
That can be said of all of the process listed hums above. We aren't
aware that process constrains us to make hums solely related to
questions within existing Internet-Drafts.
Cullen Jennings
Jon Peterson
RAI Area Directors
On Apr 17, 2007, at 8:06 PM, Randall Gellens wrote:
All,
We, the co-chairs of the GEOPRIV working group, have received private
messages of concern regarding the GEOPRIV meeting held at IETF 68 and
the outcome of that meeting. Upon initial investigation, we believe
there were irregularities with the scheduling and agenda of the
meeting that rise above the normal course of business within the
IETF. It is our opinion that at this time, it is best to bring
notice of these irregularities to the working group in the interest
of transparency and for the integrity of the IETF.
AGENDA CHANGE
The IETF process allows for agenda changes during meetings. At the
outset of the meeting, the agenda was changed substantially from the
published agenda. This change included removing the discussion of
location signing and integrity and replacing it with an L7-LCP
protocol consensus call. However, evidence has arisen that the
the Area Directors, Cullen Jennings and Jon Peterson, met privately
with
some participants of the GEOPRIV working group to inform them
of this agenda change. Cullen Jennings is the Area Advisor to
GEOPRIV.
If such meetings did occur, we believe them to be improper and to
have potentially harmed the integrity and transparency of GEOPRIV and
the IETF. It is not proper for officiates of a working group to plan
working group agenda changes and privately inform only select group
participants. Doing so disadvantages participants of the working
group who have not been advised of this change. This is especially
true for this particular meeting as the agenda change precipitated 15
hums during the meeting.
SCHEDULE CHANGE
As noted ahead of time, two of the three co-chairs, Andy and Allison,
were unable to attend IETF 68. The working group co-chairs planned
for this in advance by finding a substitute acting chair, Henning
Schulzrinne, to aid the one co-chair, Randy, who was able to
attend. This change was publicly announced on the mailing list
before IETF 68. However, the RAI Area Directors announced a last
minute (Sunday) schedule change which created an unresolvable conflict
for Randy. The Area Directors executed this schedule change over the
objections of the GEOPRIV co-chairs and in full knowledge of the
conflict it created. Additionally, the reason given was so that a
working group co-chair for another working group could attend his
meeting.
As a result of the schedule change, the meeting was co-chaired by Jon
Peterson, the other RAI Area Director. Consequent to the agenda
change regarding L7-LCP, Henning recused himself during the latter
half the meeting, leaving Jon Peterson to solely run the meeting.
During the meeting, a few participants expressed concerns regarding
the agenda and schedule changes. These concerns were dismissed by
Jon.
CONSENSUS CALLS
As noted above, the meeting resulted in an unusually high (15) number
of consensus calls for GEOPRIV. This includes the unusual decision to
use an alternate consensus method of a plurality vote to choose
between
two protocol proposals. As noted in the raw minutes and the
audio recording of the meeting, for the call that used the
plurality voting method, Cullen Jennings both called the consensus
and cast the last and tie-breaking vote in the room. It should also
be noted that one of the hums was called on a question not described
in an existing Internet-Draft.
The schedule change, the agenda change made known to a few select
participants in advance, and the unusual sense-of-the-room hums,
together
create at least the appearance that there may have been an attempt to
manipulate the IETF process to hold and predetermine the outcome of
consensus calls. Even the appearance of such manipulation,
regardless of
how well-intentioned the actions may have been, threatens the
integrity
and openness of the IETF.
The IETF relies on not just open, fare processes, but also
transparency that good procedures are followed. The irregularities
are now on the record of the group, hopefully never to be repeated.
In order to follow IETF process, all resolutions put forward during
a working group meeting must be ratified on the working group's
mailing list. The chairs will shortly be sending messages to formally
initiate consensus calls on the sense-of-the-room hums that were taken
in Prague. Since so many hums were put forth during the IETF 68
meeting, we plan to send multiple messages to the working group
mailing list seeking ratification of the proposals.
Because of what happened in Prague, the chairs want to make very
sure that the subsequent consensus calls are very open and
non-coercive. We ask all working group participants to please pay
close attention to these calls and respond appropriately.
The first of these messages will be sent shortly.
Sincerely,
The geopriv co-chairs:
- Andy
- Allison
- Randy
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