Subject: Re: Last Call: 'IETF Problem Statement' to Informational RFC

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 08:57:58 -0800

--On 5. januar 2004 23:40 -0500 Keith Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> If you wish to raise some of these commments as IETF Last Call
>> comments, I think you'll have to take the responsibility for raising
>> these issues at IETF last call yourself.
>
> I thought that is what I was requesting.  And we do have a tradition of
> considering last call comments even if they are late.

OK, so I interpret your comment as saying you want your November 20 
comments entered as IETF Last Call comments, with no wording changes. Will 
do.

                     Harald

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 13:25:26 -0500

In message <000201c3d479$9934ede0$010aff0a@tsg>, "todd glassey" writes:
>So then Steve - if the Chair can declare as to what
>Consensus means then what is the point of a WG - The
>Chair could take their own vote as a co and pass it...
>Ridiculous and extreme but still possible under today's
>rules. The issue specifically is
>
>    1)    What is a consensus and who determines it for
>each "vote"...

The chair determines it; abuses of that power can be and have been 
appealed.  Voting -- as you're repeatedly proposed, with essentially no 
support -- would require many other massive changes to the IETF 
structure, such as formal membership.  But you know all that, because 
you've raised the issue repeatedly and received the same answers.  
>
>    2)    How is a consensus documented and what about
>the capturing of dissenting opinions from the
>Consensus -

The working group mailing list archive.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 09:21:12 -0800

Todd

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 9:05 AM
Subject: Re: Last Call: 'IETF Problem Statement' to
Informational RFC

> In message
<[email-masked]>,
[email-masked] writes:
> >
> >On tisdag, jan 6, 2004, at 10:26 Asia/Seoul, Keith
Moore wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>> To the group: Apart from this one message from
John, and a "ship it"
> >>> message from Brian, I have seen no further Last
Call comments to the
> >>> IETF list or the IESG list. Is this in line with
your perceptions, or
> >>> did my search of my mailboxes miss something?
> >>
> >> I submitted comments on November 20; they are in
the list archives at
http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/pipermail/problem-statement/2003-
> >> November/003225.html
> >>
> >> since these appear to have been ignored by the WG
management, (i.e.
> >> the chairs declared "rough consensus" without even
responding to these
> >> comments), I believe IESG should consider them as
comments for its
> >> Last Call.
> >
> >
> >While we did call rough consensus despite your
comments, and those of
> >Todd Glassey and Alex Conta,  we did not ignore your
comments and they
> >were included in the report on the rough consensus:
> >
>
>http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/pipermail/problem-stateme
nt/2003-December/
> >003245.html
>
> >to which you commented, albeit not in agreement,:
> >
>
>http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/pipermail/problem-stateme
nt/2003-December/
> >003247.html
> >
> >The discussion went on for a little bit after that,
without, as far as
> >I can tell, any support for your position.  I do,
however, support your
> >forwarding of your unresolved comments to the IESG
during the IETF last
> >call.
>
>
> Right.  Note that 2418 explicitly notes that rough
consensus is not the
> same as unanmity -- chairs are perfectly free to
declare consensus even
> if there are some objections to a document.
>
>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:16:05 -0500

> While we did call rough consensus despite your comments, and those of  
> Todd Glassey and Alex Conta,  we did not ignore your comments and they  
> December/003245.html

that's a stretch.  I certainly didn't recognize a response to any of my  
comments in this "report".

> December/003247.html

yes, I was commenting on your complete failure to evaluate my comments.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 14:23:56 -0500

> Right.  Note that 2418 explicitly notes that rough consensus is not the
> same as unanmity -- chairs are perfectly free to declare consensus even

True.  However, in 13 or so years in IETF this is the first time I can 
recall that a chair has insisted that last call comments be considered 
valid only if the group has expressed affirmative consensus on them.  I 
believe WG participants have come to expect last call comments to be 
evaluated for reasonableness, not  that they're being asked to reach a 
separate consensus on every issue raised in last call.

This insistence by the chair seems especially odd for a document which 
is not a consensus statement, but a "list of problems that are believed 
to exist by a significant constituency".  We don't have even rough 
consensus on this list of problems, what we have is the biases and 
editorial decisions of the authors and chairs.

Also, we normally place an even higher value on correctness than we do 
on consensus, and most of my comments were specifically intended as 
corrections to inaccurate statements and exaggerations that are in the 
document.  If IESG doesn't agree that these statements need to be 
corrected, well, at least someone besides the WG chairs will have 
considered it.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 11:02:23 +0900

On tisdag, jan 6, 2004, at 10:26 Asia/Seoul, Keith Moore wrote:

>
>> To the group: Apart from this one message from John, and a "ship it"  
>> message from Brian, I have seen no further Last Call comments to the  
>> IETF list or the IESG list. Is this in line with your perceptions, or  
> I submitted comments on November 20; they are in the list archives at
>
> since these appear to have been ignored by the WG management, (i.e.  
> the chairs declared "rough consensus" without even responding to these  
> comments), I believe IESG should consider them as comments for its  
> Last Call.

http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/pipermail/problem-statement/2003-December/ 
003245.html

http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/pipermail/problem-statement/2003-December/ 
003247.html

The discussion went on for a little bit after that, without, as far as  
I can tell, any support for your position.  I do, however, support your  
forwarding of your unresolved comments to the IESG during the IETF last  
call.

a.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 18:49:35 -0800

Keith,

the comments made at WG Last Call are supposed to form part of the decision 
of the WG Chairs to declare consensus; I don't understand any part of the 
IETF process as "the IESG must revisit every issue that was raised and/or 
resolved during WG Last Call when reviewing the result of the IETF Last 
Call".

If you wish to raise some of these commments as IETF Last Call comments, I 
think you'll have to take the responsibility for raising these issues at 
IETF last call yourself.

In a group that is so much concerned with process or the lack of it, the 
least we can do is to try to follow what process we have.

                     Harald

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 23:40:26 -0500

> In a group that is so much concerned with process or the lack of it, 
> the least we can do is to try to follow what process we have.

Well, this group certainly didn't make much of a point of following 
process.  The document doesn't represent consensus of the WG; rather it 
represents some people's opinions about the problems with this 
organization while ignoring others' opinions.  So for the WG chairs to 
claim that they only needed to consider last call comments for which 
there was consensus seems a bit odd - apparently they thought they 
needed consensus for last call comments but not for the actual content 
of the document.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 08:38:21 -0800

Thanks - that's why I asked!

I searched my folders for messages with the words "last call" and "problem" 
in the subject, and your message had "comments to 
"draft-ietf-problem-issue-statement-05.txt"" as its subject, so I missed it.

Will add the comments now.

                  Harald

--On 6. januar 2004 11:15 -0500 Alex Conta <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>
>> Thank you for your comments.
>> [...]
>> As an experiment, I've started tracking issues on the following URL:
>>
>> <https://roundup.machshav.com/lastcall/index>
>>
> I am not sure how messages for your tracking issues experiment were
> selected.
>
> I have sent comments for the "problem statement" document to the IESG
> list on December 18, 2003, which is before the end of the last call
> period on December 23, 2003. I could not see them captured on the site
> indicated by your URL. I have the message in my "sent" folder, in case
> there is a need for a resend.
>
> Alex
>
>

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 15:50:38 -0800

Thank you for your comments.
I think 1) is already addressed in the abstract, but that and 2) are easy 
to do with an RFC Editor note; 3) is somewhat more iffy to my mind, since 
there's actually some language in section 1.3 already.
As an experiment, I've started tracking issues on the following URL:

To the group: Apart from this one message from John, and a "ship it" 
message from Brian, I have seen no further Last Call comments to the IETF 
list or the IESG list. Is this in line with your perceptions, or did my 
search of my mailboxes miss something?

                       Harald

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 20:26:40 -0500

http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/pipermail/problem-statement/2003-November/ 
003225.html

since these appear to have been ignored by the WG management, (i.e. the  
chairs declared "rough consensus" without even responding to these  
comments), I believe IESG should consider them as comments for its Last  
Call.

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 19:38:12 -0600

And my "echo Brian - just ship it" is at
http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/pipermail/problem-statement/2003-November/003214.html.

I replied to Brian, who replied to the WG last call request, and it
shows that way in the archives - should have been visible, I would
have thought.

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Keith Moore" <[email-masked]>
To: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>;
"Keith Moore" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 7:26 PM
Subject: Re: Last Call: 'IETF Problem Statement' to Informational RFC

> since these appear to have been ignored by the WG management, (i.e.
the
> comments), I believe IESG should consider them as comments for its
Last

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 09:01:06 -0800

Keith,

the mechanism of requiring at least one voice apart from the commenter to 
speak up in support in order for a point to be considered has been used 
before - the case I remember most vividly was Dan Bernstein's objections to 
a number of points related to the DRUMS WG's revisions of the Internet Mail 
protocols.

In this case, there was no explicit invocation of such a requirement by the 
chairs, but there were voices on the list saying "just ship it".

Anyway, your comments have now been entered in my comments tracker, and the 
IESG will evaluate them. Please review to see that they are entered (and 
named) reasonably.

                       Harald

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 12:05:58 -0500

---

From: Alex Conta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 11:15:38 -0500

Alex