Subject: An overview of where the IETF change process is currently at

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 07:12:06 -0700

Since Vienna, there have been a number of efforts started or continued to 
address some of the issues identified by the problem-statement working 
group.

A number of these are at stages where they do not yet have visible output 
that we can review; however, it seems important to make sure the community 
knows about these efforts and can offer feedback and suggestions where 
helpful.

To facilitate this interaction, I've put up an overview Web page at 
<http://www.ietf.org/u/chair/change-status.html> that attempts to give a 
broad overview of things going on.

I intend to keep this page updated as we get more specific proposals and 
community engagement in the remaining months leading to our Minneapolis 
IETF meeting. This is the current snapshot.

Enjoy!

                    Harald Tveit Alvestrand

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From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 11:46:44 -0400

On Sunday, September 28, 2003, at 10:12 AM, Harald Tveit Alvestrand 
wrote:
> <http://www.ietf.org/u/chair/change-status.html> that attempts to give 
> a broad overview of things going on.

Thanks!  It's very helpful.

The working group is currently stymied on the question of how to
proceed with longer-term organizational and process changes, and
that's obviously not good.  Avri and I need to talk some more
about how to break the logjam but one thing that concerns me a
great deal is how we're going to be able to come to consensus
when there's strong opposition to pretty much every option that's
been put forward.  One thing we have discussed is that it may
be useful to identify the characteristics that the process itself
needs to have.  While this may sound too process-heavy or too
therapy-cultureish, I do think that it may help take some of
the heat out of the discussion and provide some more objective
criteria for discussing options moving forward (not to mention
provide some operating parameters for whatever process is
identified).  If it appears that the discussion is unproductive
or circular it will be stopped.

Some of the characteristics that might be considered include
things like whether or not it should be consensus-based, how
transparent it should be, how the community should be able to
provide input, and so on.  What's important?  What's not?

Melinda

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 09:44:59 -0700

--On 28. september 2003 11:46 -0400 Melinda Shore <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Sunday, September 28, 2003, at 10:12 AM, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

this makes sense to me. For one thing, it is important for people to say 
WHY they object, not just that they object - and this approach seems able 
to capture some of that. There's always some reason for their objection - 
some property they want the process to have - and getting that formulated 
is important.

> provide input, and so on.  What's important?  What's not?

I think we all agree that the process needs to come to the best conclusions 
for the Internet - that is, it needs to propose "high quality, timely 
process changes to facilitate making high quality, timely standards". Or 
something like that.

The question is what properties it needs to have in order to achieve that.

                           Harald