--On Tuesday, June 23, 2009 12:49 -0400 Marshall Eubanks
<tme@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>...
>> After all of this, the Trust developed consensus around the
>> license by reference option.
>>
>> So, I feel that the Trustees have done due diligence here.
>>
>> Of course, there is never a final word on these matters. If
>> you know reasons why this is inadvisable, I would be glad
>> to hear them. That is, of course, why all of these matters
>> go to community review.
>
> I of course extend this request to everyone. It is important
> to get this right.
Marshall,
As you will see in the much longer note I just sent in response
to a note from Jorge on which the Trustees were copied, my
fundamental problem here is not with one form of license
statement or another or with one phrasing or another, although I
think both need to be examined carefully and gotten right.
Instead, I think a fundamental disconnect has developed between
at least some portion of the community and how we understood BCP
101 and the intent behind it on the one hand and the
IAOC/Trustees on the other.
In my view, the IASA (including both the IAOC and the Trust) are
expected to be implementers of policy, not definers of policy.
I welcome policy _suggestions_ and drafts from the IASA but
believe that the IAOC and Trustees are obligated to be
sufficiently open and accountable that the community can really
engage intelligently in discussions of the policy issues.
When you say something equivalent to "the Trustees did a lot of
work, evaluated all of the options in private, and then reached
consensus and presented the community with the one option we
agreed on (also in private)" then I think you are violating both
the assumption about where the policy-determination
responsibility lies but fundamental norms of the community. If
the document came to the IETF list with a summary of the other
options you had considered and why you had made those decisions,
the situation would be different. If that summary was in
minutes that were published on a timely enough basis that they
could figure into this discussion, the situation might be
different. But here you say "After all of this, the Trust
developed consensus" ... "and this is what you get", I think we
have a disconnect.
I note that the IESG is much more closely connected to the IETF
community than the Trustees and that they have explicit
responsibility and authority for determining IETF consensus.
100% of its "voting" members come out of a community selection
process via the Nomcom. It does its work iteratively with the
community and many of its decisions are made based on
suggestions from, and after thorough vetting by, open Working
Groups. It holds private discussions for convenience but
concluded years ago that the community would be much better
served by tracking systems that actually identify discussions,
options, and, where relevant, the reasoning behind decisions.
More recently, they have adopted models for narrative as well as
formal teleconference minutes in order to keep the community
better informed on a timely basis. They seem to be about a
month behind on those, but that is hugely different from "no
minutes or other public record since September".
The Trustees, if only because of that lesser degree of
connection and less well defined responsibility for defining
policy and determining community consensus, have, IMO, a much
stronger obligation than the IESG, not for making decisions, but
for exposing options and considerations to the community for
decisions.
Another example of this arises in conjunction with the comments
that I made to the IAB and that were circulated to the Trustees
based on a draft the IAB had seen very short time earlier.
Apparently those comments reached the Trustees and you decided
(perhaps by default) to put them aside and get the draft out due
to time considerations. At one level that is ok -- if you have
concluded that you have a deadline and need to get a document
posted, I'm ok with that (although the iterative and I-D posting
style I suggested would largely eliminate the problem of a
"deadline" associated with the community's first look at a
document (except in real emergencies).
But then I think your cover note should have said "The Trustees
want the community to look at this because we think most of the
details are solid even though we are still examining some of the
text" and not "Please accept this message as a formal request by
the IETF Trustees for your review and feedback on the proposed
revision to the TLP document. The comment period will end on
July 20, 2009. [...] I expect the Trustees will decide on
whether to adopt this revision shortly after July 20, 2009."
That sort of statement is appropriate only for a document that
is already debugged and that the Trustees believe is ready to
go... not one that, to borrow words from RFC 2026, "contains
known ... deficiencies".
regards,
john
p.s. Either you or Jorge have my permission to post my more
extended response to him and the Trustees to the IETF list
should you choose to do so.
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