Subject: RE: [Techspec] publication times & stable identifiers

From: "Stephen Hayes (TX/EUS)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 14:34:15 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Hoffman [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2005 2:09 PM
> To: Stephen Hayes (TX/EUS); Leslie Daigle; [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: [Techspec] publication times & stable identifiers
> 
> 
> At 1:38 PM -0500 10/27/05, Stephen Hayes (TX/EUS) wrote:
> >Note that even though 3GPP can achieve fast publication by relying 
> >on support staff, this does not mean IETF can.  3GPP membership is 
> >composed of companies and these companies have the resources to 
> >respond in a timely manner to questions and editing requests.  This 
> >may not be possible when the involved parties are volunteer 
> >individuals.
> 
> The current RFC Editor is paid under a contract with ISOC; they are 
> not volunteers.
> 
I wasn't referring to the RFC Editors.  I was referring to the authors that need to complete the 48 hours and other parties that must work with the RFC editor to complete the work.

In 3GPP, that responsibility to provide timely resolution of issues towards the spec editors is with the supporting companies which are motivated to get the specs published for commercial reasons.  This situation seems different from IETF.

Regards, Stephen
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --VPN Consortium

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---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 12:55:20 -0700

At 2:34 PM -0500 10/27/05, Stephen Hayes (TX/EUS) wrote:
>I wasn't referring to the RFC Editors.  I was referring to the 
>authors that need to complete the 48 hours and other parties that 
>must work with the RFC editor to complete the work.

Whoops, sorry, I misunderstood.

>In 3GPP, that responsibility to provide timely resolution of issues 
>towards the spec editors is with the supporting companies which are 
>motivated to get the specs published for commercial reasons.  This 
>situation seems different from IETF.

Right. The IETF (correctly) requires sign-off from a group of 
volunteers for each document.

That is an interesting issue, but I think we would have much faster 
response to the "RFC Editor has the document ready for publication" 
state if it came within a few weeks after IESG approval rather than a 
few months. This might be even more true if the RFC editing process 
was completely transparent, with a tracker-type mechanism. If the WG 
knew that their document was ready to be born, but was stuck, a few 
people would probably try to do out-of-band nudging to get the 
signers-off attention.

Of course, vacations alway happen (well, not often enough), so 
another method to achieve faster final publishing would be to 
all/encourage the document authors to designate alternates. This 
makes much more sense when the publication time is more predictable 
than currently.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 08:43:50 +0300 (EEST)

On Thu, 27 Oct 2005, Paul Hoffman wrote:
> Right. The IETF (correctly) requires sign-off from a group of volunteers for 
> each document. [...]

I do not think the AUTH48 period needs to take long.

When I was a WG chair, we had a number of non-responsive authors; if 
they had not signed off the document within a week, I asked the AD to 
sign off the document on their behalf.  This worked just fine.

The problem with holidays can likely be mitigated if the RFC-editing 
process is more predictable, i.e., you can estimate when the document 
will enter AUTH48 so you can either give guidance to co-authors, WG 
chair or AD, check the message from vacation, or whatever.

My perception has been that when a document lingers for longer than a 
week in AUTH48 state, it's either because there are copyediting issues 
which need to be fixed (or other similar issues like an internet-draft 
used as a reference having been published as RFC since) and the 
rfc-editor after each step asks all co-authors to sign off the 
document, or that the authors have gone "missing", when an AD should 
step in to help.

The RFC-editor's processing time (without AUTH48) could be reduced to, 
say, one month, I think the time in AUTH48 could be significantly 
reduced as well.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 17:01:04 +0100

--On torsdag, oktober 27, 2005 12:55:20 -0700 Paul Hoffman 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Of course, vacations alway happen (well, not often enough), so another
> method to achieve faster final publishing would be to all/encourage the
> document authors to designate alternates. This makes much more sense when
> the publication time is more predictable than currently.

I think we have a clear requirement that the IETF (WG, WG chairs, AD or 
IESG - I don't care too much) should be able to say who has to sign off on 
the final results on IETF documents.
The default should probably be "the people listed on the front page", but I 
think the IETF needs to be able to change this when it makes sense.

Another thing we should have: A visible list of who's signed off and whose 
signature is still outstanding. When I was AD, I usually did not get copied 
on people's "yes, this looks OK" messages to the RFC Editor, although I 
usually got copies of the complaints.... and I had no way to tell who the 
document was ready for.

I think I've said both things before....

                           Harald

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 16:11:55 -0700

At 5:01 PM +0100 10/30/05, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>I think we have a clear requirement that the IETF (WG, WG chairs, AD 
>or IESG - I don't care too much) should be able to say who has to 
>sign off on the final results on IETF documents.
>The default should probably be "the people listed on the front 
>page", but I think the IETF needs to be able to change this when it 
>makes sense.

Fully agree. This is a requirement, not a luxury, for the document 
publishing to be predictable. It would prevent WG items from being in 
the RFC Editor queue for years because of rogue authors.

>Another thing we should have: A visible list of who's signed off and 
>whose signature is still outstanding.

If we consider it a requirement to have the process be predictable, 
having every significant step in the publishing process be visible is 
also a requirement. We pretty much have that now with the Internet 
Draft part of the process, and the result has been excellent.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium