Subject: RE: ADs who are also WG chairs

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 09:11:48 -0700

> What's to stop Big Bad Company stuffing an Oasis WG with ringers?

What is to stop them doing that in an IETF WG? Since everyone is
theoretically participating as an individual I can't see how the WG Chair
could claim consensus if big bad company wanted to block something.

Oh yes, sorry I remember the WG chair can claim consensus because at the end
of the day it is only his opinion that matters. See DNSEXT for details.

> What's to stop a commercial grouping pushing something through
> an Oasis WG that is good for them and harmful to the Internet?

Same as when the IETF proposes something that would be harmful, the
community of users rejects a protocol that it does not want.

But it is a good question since there are far more companies with market
power who are now participating in OASIS than are currently fully engaged in
IETF process. So if there is a risk that 'evil' protocols come from OASIS
and 'corrupt' the Internet then that is going to be happening regardless of
what the opinion is here. 

> How can Roberts' Rules be applied on a mailing list?

Roberts rules are not directly applicable to a mailing list since
it is asynchronous conversation. They are applicable to conference
calls and in person meetings.

Even so we have had many successful polls through mailing lists, 
in many cases using Quaker polls and other consensus finding 
processes rather than the more divisive up or down questions we
see in IETF process.

> (I'm not trying to make debating points - I really am concerned
> that these are serious weaknesses in the model you describe. And I
> spent two years chairing a Board that supposedly followed Roberts'
> Rules and used email extensively, and I can't answer the third
> question.)

And your evidence for thinking that the IETF approach is working at any
level would be what?

		Phill

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 12:53:13 -0400

> community of users rejects a protocol that it does not want.

to a large degree, users have to take what vendors give them.   to some
extent users trust the IETF to specify what will work well. if we fail
to do that, we become irrelevant. 

> processes rather than the more divisive up or down questions we

sounds good.  I'd love to see pointers to descriptions of these things;
we certainly need to find better ways to conduct mailing list
discussions.

Keith

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2003 17:53:36 +0200

> could claim consensus if big bad company wanted to block something.

This is the point about IETF consensus that you truly don't seem
to get. The chair, or the IESG, when judging consensus, is entitled
to decide that the 100 hands waving are equal to only one, because
of the knowledge that Big Bad Company has sent 100 people to the
meeting or mailing list. You may not like the fact that we give
this power to the chairs and the IESG, but that *is* the IETF's
answer to this question.

> of the day it is only his opinion that matters. See DNSEXT for details.

We shouldn't argue from one case where you happen to disagree with the
chair and have chosen not to appeal. We have ~100 WGs and I don't hear
100 claims of this kind, or even ten a year. (That doesn't mean your
complaint is invalid, or valid, but we have no evidence that it's
typical.)

> community of users rejects a protocol that it does not want.

There is no connection between my question and your answer, and no 
link between the first and second halves of your answer.

The equivalent question is "What's to stop a commercial grouping
pushing something through an IETF WG that is good for them and harmful 
to the Internet?" The answer is supposed to be "checks and balances
applied by careful WG chartering, Last Call and IESG review." This
could of course be failing - that's a legitimate topic for this list -
but what I was asking is how does Oasis deal with this risk?

The market is of course always able to reject something it doesn't want.
That is orthogonal to something that is harmful. Users don't understand
what is harmful to the commons, they understand what is good for them.

> what the opinion is here.

That may be true. And if it's true, let's consider that it may be so *because* 
the IETF has been successful at deflecting 'evil' work. But actually, I
suspect that Oasis is mainly working on topics that IETF would consider
out of scope (and that W3C might have expected to handle).

> processes rather than the more divisive up or down questions we

The biggest problem is that RR allow the chair to drive to a decision
on exactly one question at a time, or to push that question on the
stack until a subsidiary question has been resolved. Serialising
debate in that style is essentially impossible on a mailing
list.

> And your evidence for thinking that the IETF approach is working at any

Finding out what isn't working in the IETF is exactly what this
WG exists for.

   Brian