On 29 Nov 2012, at 18:51, SM <sm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi Ed, > At 06:54 29-11-2012, Edward Lewis wrote: >> Earlier in the thread I saw that someone expressed dismay that BOFs seem to be WG's that have already been meeting in secret. I agree with that. At the last meeting in Atlanta, I filled in sessions with BOFs and found that the ones I chose seemed as if they were already on the way to a predetermined solution. Only one had a presentation trying to set up the problem to be solved, others just had detailed talks on draft solutions. In one there was a complaint that the mail list wasn't very active - not a WG, a BOF! Not very engaging. The complaint about a quiet mail list may have been a comment I made at the mdnsext BoF. The reason for that is that the guidance we have for holding a BoF (RFC 5434) recommends forming a public mail list a couple of months before the IETF meeting where the BoF is planned and to have substantive list discussion in advance of the BoF, which should help form a solid problem statement and draft charter. > Extensions of the Bonjour Protocol Suite (mdnsext) BoF > > The agenda [5] mentions "Goals of the BoF" with a link. I don't recall whether any proposed solution was discussed. Some views on potential solutions were made at the mic in the BoF. But the draft that was presented was a requirements draft, not a solutions one. I'll speak to Ralph soon about moving this forward. >> Bringing in baked work because there are multiple independent and non-interoperable solutions is what the IETF is all about. Bringing in a baked specification just to get a stamp on it is not. The former is a driver for mdnsext, i.e. a number of vendors producing potentially non-interoperable mDNS proxying solutions. I don't see a problem with the latter, especially if it documents something useful that is otherwise opaque. Certainly some WG lists have a lot of traffic, and on lists it's easy for a small number of vocal people to dominate the discussion, which is less likely to happen face to face (where people have to queue and take turns). Tim