Brian Carpenter said: "I'm afraid that this would allow people to game the IETF by abusing the SG mechanism to give their effort an appearance of open-ended status. We probably don't want to see CV's including lines like "chair of IETF foobar Study Group, 2008-2011"." That would be scary indeed. The basic idea is to provide clear goals and feedback on status -- and encourage the participants to make quick progress. Nothing clears the mind better than an upcoming deadline, particularly one that is difficult to extend. Frankly, if a SG can't come up with consensus on a WG charter and an explanation of why the RFC 2418 criteria are satisfied within the 6 to 12 month initial milestone, the odds of WG success are not very good either. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf