Thanks, Brian, for these documents, and while I worry a bit that they're a response to a specific situation and may not be asking quite the right set of questions with respect to the future of the IETF, I do think it's time to revisit some really fundamental questions about how we're structured. The formation of the LLC makes some of these questions a bit more timely, but even so I've been struck that we don't always have the clarity we need around things like responsibility and accountability, and how information flows through the organization. The IAB has been taking steps to be more transparent but to be totally candid there's been some compartmentalization of information which is fine in theory but makes accountability extremely difficult in practice. I'll add that because we make process changes through document development and through our consensus process (such as it is), it's difficult to be agile in the face of changing circumstances and changing demands, and that's a non-trivial problem. Years ago Avri and I co-chaired the "problem" working group, which was charged with documenting structural problems in the IETF that needed to be addressed. In practice it turned out to be month upon month of kvetching and I think did more harm than good. I'd like to see a way forward that doesn't repeat that mistake but based on the quality of discussion on this list and elsewhere about the RSE situation I am not particularly optimistic. But, I do agree that for the health of the organization we need to figure out how to work through this. What we're doing right now isn't working well. Melinda -- Melinda Shore melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx Software longa, hardware brevis
