Russ, our IAB chair and former IETF chair, just sent a message to the
IETF list regarding a Last Call on draft-ietf-pkix-est. Here is the
entire contents of his message, save quoting the whole Last Call request:
On 6/10/13 1:45 PM, Russ Housley wrote:
I have read the document, I a support publication on the standards track.
Russ
A month ago, we had another very senior member of the community post
just such a message (in that case directly to the IESG) in response to a
different Last Call. I took that senior member of the community to task
for it. But apparently Russ either disagrees with my complaint or didn't
notice that discussion on the IESG list, so I think it's worth airing
here in public:
A statement such as the above is almost entirely useless to me as an
IESG member trying to determine consensus. It is content-free.
We don't vote in the IETF, so a statement of support without a reason is
meaningless. We should not be encouraging folks to send such things, and
having the IAB chair do so is encouraging bad behavior. Had I not known
Russ and his particular expertise, I would have no reason to take it
into consideration *at all*. We should not have to determine the
reputation of the poster to determine the weight of the message. Even
given my background knowledge of who Russ is, I cannot tell from that
message which one of the following Russ is saying:
- This document precisely describes a protocol of which I have been an
implementer, and I was able to independently develop an interoperable
implementation from the document.
- This document is about a technology with which I have familiarity and
I have reviewed the technical details. It's fine.
- I've seen objection X to the document and I think the objection is
incorrect for such-and-so reasons.
- My company has a vested interest in this technology becoming a
standard, and even though I know nothing about it, I support it becoming
a standards track document.
- My Aunt Gertrude is the document editor and she said that she needs
statements of support, so here I am.
- I have a running wager on when we're going to reach RFC 7000 and I
want to increase my odds of winning.
I take it I am supposed to presume from my friendship and knowledge of
Russ that one of the first three is true and that the last three are
not. (Well, maybe the last one might be true.) But if instead of from
"Russ Housely", the message was from "Foo Bar", I would have absolutely
no way to distinguish among the above.
I think we should stop with these one-line statements of support. They
don't add anything to the consensus call. I'm disappointed that Russ
contributed to this pattern.
Other opinions?
pr
--
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478