Subject: Re: [drinks] Drinks: Dead, Alive, or just sleeping it off

From: "Alexander Mayrhofer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 15:35:47 +0100

Cullen Jennings wrote on Saturday, December 19, 2009:
> I'm happy to get any suggestions on what we should do with 
> this WG but here's my straw man plan from what I currently 
> know. We watch and see if multiple people are willing to put 
> in the effort needed over the next few months and we make 
> significant progress between now and the next meeting. And I 
> don't mean a small burst of energy the week before the draft 
> deadline. I'm sure lots of people have good intentions of 
> working on this but if it does not actually make a high 
> enough priority that people do work on it, then I suggest we 
> shelve the work until this becomes top priority again and 
> close the WG. No work would be lost, the mailing list could 
> remain open and drafts will continue to exist on the web. 

[WG Chair hat on]

I agree that there has been little activity in the last few months in
2009 in this group. The inactivity towards the end of 2009 was
definitely also a personal fault from myself, since i was greatly
distracted from DRINKS for personal reaons. 

However, starting with the beginning of the year, parts of the original
author team of the requirements as well as the protocol draft have
picked up work again. I am (with my WG hat off) part of that team. I'm
pleased that Jean-Francois Mule has also managed to acquire two new
members for that team. There are currently 8 people in that team, and
all of them have assured that they are willing to invest significant
amount of work/time into the documents.

The team holds weekly conference calls (three so far in 2010), and will
report progress back to WG chairs as well the main DRINKS list. One
valueable outcome of one of the first calls was that there were some
issues discovered in the SPEERMINT terminology, on which parts of the
DRINKS work is based. 

Therefore, i am confident that the group will be able to demonstrate
significant progress before IETF 77, and therefore i object shutting
down the WG prematurely. 

> I've also considered if a charter with a greatly reduced 
> scope to help get something small done, then move on to 
> something bigger. But if there is zero energy to do work, it 
> won't matter how small the charter is so the reduced charter 
> did not seem like it would help.

Obviously, our milestones are way outdated - again, this is primarily
the fault of the WG chairs - an action item taken away from Stockholm
was creating new milestone, but hasn't been completed since then. I'm
picking up the work on new, realistic milestones, and i am also open for
discussion around simplifying (or splitting?) the charter - either via
phone, email or in person during the Anaheim meeting. 

But, as outlined above - i am confident that the "energy level" in the
group has significantly risen since December, and that the work is
making progress.

Alex