Subject: RE: IESG restructuring (Re: Example of the One Liners out of context)

From: "Bound, Jim" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 01:43:54 -0400

Melinda,

I don't want more heads at the helm.  But I do believe there is much
conflict of interest in the boundaries of the various roles, groups, and
individual members.  But like the good ole boy network it will never be
totally clean, and maybe someday it will be called the good ole person
network and IETF too can get past gender.  I am debating one case on the
NOMCOM currently and a straw person for some text has been presented.
The rejection is to keep the IESG and IAB Liaisons current process in
place.  And others agree with me.  We shall see.

I don't view it as black or white or good or bad.  But the question to
ponder is in any situation where an authority can influence a process
that is suppose to be done by a republic view (elected by others as the
NOMCOM) or a democratic process (a WG vote) and then later influence by
those in charge, and no other community member can, then that is a
potential for investigation of a conflict of Interest.  Note I said
investigation not that in fact it was a conflict.  It is a hint.

Whether this has happened or not is irrelevant the question is should
any potential be fixed?  Some argue if it is not broke don't fix it.
But the problem is that I personally believe that many in our community
do not have absolute trust of the process or the leaders at all.  Just
this mail lists show that at best it is 50/50.   That is a problem.
If all were happy there would be no complaints and no problem working
group.

The other analogy is that I feel the IETF is run as an Academic process
not modeled after a business process nor any government process except
for a monarchy and I have already stated I hate monarchies.  If no one
was complaining it would be fine but many are complaining, we stink at
time-to-market for standards, the process is too long, and I believe
some very questionable technical review and hold ups have been
completely out of line by the IESG process.

It is like a lot of divorced men I know its always their wives fault,
maybe 1 out of 10 will admit they were assholes.  The IESG is sitting
here and not one of them except Harald has admitted a fault on their
part or even open to discuss it here.  They are not infallable and have
made mistakes that is the real point, and so has the community.  Out in
the IETF we have all kinds of reminders as Chairs, as Authors, as WG
members to remind us we can be wrong and make mistakes.  NOTHING like
that exists for for the IESG and they need that and need it now.  They
need a higher authority to answer to.  And that higher authority should
be added process rules and forms of process that put a check on things
they do wrong.  I believe the priority for me is to ship specs faster
and complete them.  The other stuff is secondary.  But for people to be
here and tell me the IESG is fine thats simly not true.

/jim

/jim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Melinda Shore [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 7:35 PM
> To: Bound, Jim
> Cc: Harald Tveit Alvestrand; Randy Bush; 
> [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: IESG restructuring (Re: Example of the One 
> Liners out of context) 
> 
> 
> > if we are serious about this discussion having a process 
> director is a 
> > = very bad idea is my input.  The IETF chair does this job. 
>  Lets not 
> > add = more heads to the process to solve problems.
> 
> The root issue here was conflict-of-interest avoidance,
> which is something that hasn't been discussed much yet.  Are 
> people feeling that we're okay on that?
> 
> Melinda
>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 07:03:16 -0400

> not modeled after a business process nor any government process 

please don't cite either business or government practices as models for 
how IETF should work - at least not axiomatically.  both of these have
at least as much insanity as academic processes.   Perhaps "academic 
processes" (whatever those are) are not quite right for IETF, but IETF's
mission is closer to being an academic one (i.e. education and discovery 
of new technology) than it is to either business or government.