Subject: [Rfced-future] More questions?

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 15:10:40 -0400

[I've been staying quiet not so much because I haven't anything to say, 
but because I've said so much over the last 6 - 8 months on this 
subject.   Here are the items I believe haven't yet been considered.]

Questions:

What level of conflicts of interest are we going to be comfortable with 
going forward?  [Jon/Bob/Joyce all worked for a non-profit organization 
and their funding for the RFC process was pretty much without strings. 
Heather was not originally from our community and AFAIK didn't have any 
contracts that would have placed her in conflict. John is active in the 
IETF and has an ISOC board position along with - I believe but could be 
wrong - other contracts directly related to IETF work.  ]

What LOE for the RSE will our choices of responsibility prescribe?   
[The RSE has generally costed out as just a little over 1/2 FTE - that 
could vary substantially based on how the RSE model is scoped and divided]

What are the appropriate roles for the technical leadership of the IETF 
(e.g. IAB/IESG) vs appropriate roles for the administrative leadership 
(e.g. LLC Board and IETF Trust) with respect to the RSE/RFC series/RPC?

Would a different home for the RFC series other than the IETF be 
appropriate (e.g. ISOC or ICANN)?

Are there associations of publishers of academic and standards documents 
that the IETF/RSE should consider being a part of (and for that matter 
external publication standards to adhere to )?

Problems:

The selection criterias for the IAB and IESG do not include the skills 
of contract/employee oversight and the devolution of responsibility for 
the RSE from the IAB to the RSOC did not cure this problem.  Management 
of the RSE/RPC by committees of the IESG/IAB  or their designees should 
probably be a last resort. [The IETF is changing into more of a 
business-like entity with permanent employees and control of its own 
finances; perhaps take advantage of that with a look at the general 
model for non-profit publishing  - maybe as part of the RSE's role. ]

Observation: 
https://github.com/intarchboard/rfced-future/blob/master/PossibleGoalsandPointsMade.md 
needs to be sorted into tactical and strategic and the tactical items 
(e.g. time to process, XML implementations, etc) should be deferred with 
prejudice until we deal with what the RSE actually is/should be/will 
be.  Those items might provide some flavor to the discussion, but 
seriously - if you need someone with XML skills to work the project for 
a time, you let the RSE make a selection and you hire them for a time.

Observation:  Focus on the role vs focus on what we want the series to 
be.  These aren't either/or items, but the discussion is going to be 
more efficient if we focus on one or the other.  In any event, the items 
listed as "Do focus on what we want the series to be" are really bug 
reports rather than "what we want the series to be".

Instead:

World facing and focused publication vs "The Journal of the IETF"  (aka 
"Who are the customers that should have a say?")

Publication for revenue vs freely available (e.g. IEEE model vs current 
IETF model)

Well-edited vs rubber-stamped (e.g. input criteria and output criteria 
for the RSE processes).

Stable technology vs flavor of the month  (At one point "Word Perfect" 
was considered the archival format for some DOD documents)

Consensus-directed vs Community input with professional oversight and 
guidance.

Mike

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 27 Apr 2020 23:36:00 -0400

>wrong - other contracts directly related to IETF work.  ]

I'm on the ISOC board appointed by the IAB, which is unpaid.  Other
than that I'm an unpaid member of the ICANN SSAC, unpaid president of
anti-spam advocacy group CAUCE, I have a contract with ICANN to test
how well some mail software and services support EAI, and I do some
expert witness stuff.

The IETF LLC hs a very strong CoI policy so I'll recuse from ISOC
board debates about the IETF budget, should there be any.

R's,
John

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 09:15:08 +0200

Hi Mike,

> Observation: https://github.com/intarchboard/rfced-future/blob/master/PossibleGoalsandPointsMade.md needs to be sorted into tactical and strategic and the tactical items (e.g. time to process, XML implementations, etc) should be deferred with prejudice until we deal with what the RSE actually is/should be/will be.  

This seems to me a very good and useful approach.  We might want to take one intermediate step: the chicken scratch you read on GitHub requires just a bit of elaboration, particular in the summary points, to be clear on what each point means, whether it is worth keeping, and what needs to be there as well.  We have that text in emails, but I’m thinking that we could use some snippets for each point (a paragraph or two, no more).  That way we know precisely what we’re prioritizing and deferring.

Thoughts?

Eliot

Ps: I’ve updated that file based on your email.

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 17:10:16 -0400

Would you mind going back and taking another whack at integrating my 
comments:

> probably be a last resort.
(what I wrote)

Does not appear to equal

> Do the IAB/IESG have the right skill sets to oversee the RSE? 
> <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/rfced-future/DAVhuWBw9M9ptH1VQgiglqmR2AQ/>
(the above strongly implies that the IAB/IESG by right have the 
oversight of the RSE which is actually one of the things we need to 
determine - my problem statement was factual with respect to the first 
sentence and implies that if either of these groups is involved in 
"oversight", then the Nomcom selection criteria needs to change.  
Personally, I think that would be a bad thing as it would make finding 
candidate just that much harder or would tend to cede responsibility and 
authority over the RSE to a subset of those groups in non-optimal ways)

Nor does
> (e.g. LLC Board and IETF Trust) with respect to the RSE/RFC series/RPC?
Match
> What roles are defined and is their relationship to one another?
>
>   * RSE, RSOC, IAB, IESG, Stream managers, LLC, ED, others?
>

Neither the RSOC, Stream Managers nor ED are technical or administrative 
leadership (and are certainly not directly responsible to the 
community), and the relationship of the RSE to those to the 
technical/admin leadership will inform a) whether there will be an RSOC  
or an RSOC like body going forward, b) the relationship of the ED to the 
RSE, and c) the role of stream managers (as designees of the various 
technical bodies - IESG/IAB/IRTF) in relationship to those bodies and to 
community with respect to the series evolution and long-term strategy. 
E.g. Three of these things are not like the others at this point in time.

At this point - with the possible exception of "tooling responsibility", 
I'm pretty happy with the "role" questions.    The relationships and 
lines of authority questions are defer-able in the details, but should 
be broadly sketched among  IETF Technical Leadership, IETF 
Administrative Leadership, RSE, and RFC community with the caveat that 
"lines of authority" need to avoid matrix management.  E.g. if the 
phrase "day to day oversight" shows up at this point, its probably the 
wrong level of discussion.  Whereas "Acts as the POC for providing 
guidance on the publication needs of the IETF standards process as 
interpreted by the technical leadership" - an "ask" vs a "directive" 
perhaps or somewhere on that spectrum.   I mostly think that the items 
listed under "what we want from the series" are either bug reports or 
tactical issues and can be deferred in favor of items that are 
descriptive of what we want the perception of the series to be (e.g my 
comment on world publication vs IETF house organ and the other 4 
spectrums in that list).  That comment carries forward into the "points 
made" section.   The list here is all over the place and I'll attempt to 
do an edit in the next week or so with my suggestions on what we work on 
first and what can and should be deferred.

Mike

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 11:34:08 +0200

Hi Mike,

> On 28 Apr 2020, at 23:10, Michael StJohns <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Would you mind going back and taking another whack at integrating my comments:
> 
>> of contract/employee oversight<< and the devolution of responsibility for 
>> Do the IAB/IESG have the right skill sets to oversee the RSE? <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/rfced-future/DAVhuWBw9M9ptH1VQgiglqmR2AQ/>

I’ve added your assertion above in the document (see toward the bottom).  And remember, that document is just meant as a means to facilitate discussion.   The bold is what is captured as a summary question (as the others are).  For everyone’s reference, one can find the “Desired Expertise” for IAB and IESG members for the 2019 selection process here <https://datatracker.ietf.org/nomcom/2019/expertise/>.  I’ve added that to the reading list.  Note that the IAB role hasn’t changed all that much since I served. 

>> What roles are defined and [what] is their relationship to one another?
>> RSE, RSOC, IAB, IESG, Stream managers, LLC, ED, others?
> 

Others have made comments along these same lines.[1][2][3][4]  I’m trying (perhaps not succeeding) to capture all of that.  And again, these are questions and you can ask others, some of which may be more important than anything I wrote.

> Neither the RSOC, Stream Managers nor ED are technical or administrative leadership (and are certainly not directly responsible to the community), and the relationship of the RSE to those to the technical/admin leadership will inform a) whether there will be an RSOC  or an RSOC like body going forward, b) the relationship of the ED to the RSE, and c) the role of stream managers (as designees of the various technical bodies - IESG/IAB/IRTF) in relationship to those bodies and to community with respect to the series evolution and long-term strategy.   E.g. Three of these things are not like the others at this point in time.

I may have caused some confusion with the summary, which is that it is intended  to help people think about what they want, not so much to describe where we are today or where we have been.  Perhaps I should clarify that.  The point of the question is for people to be able to answer in their own proposed approaches who the players are, and how they relate to one another.  Nothing more.

> 
> At this point - with the possible exception of "tooling responsibility", I'm pretty happy with the "role" questions.    The relationships and lines of authority questions are defer-able in the details, but should be broadly sketched among  IETF Technical Leadership, IETF Administrative Leadership, RSE, and RFC community with the caveat that "lines of authority" need to avoid matrix management.  E.g. if the phrase "day to day oversight" shows up at this point, its probably the wrong level of discussion.  Whereas "Acts as the POC for providing guidance on the publication needs of the IETF standards process as interpreted by the technical leadership" - an "ask" vs a "directive" perhaps or somewhere on that spectrum.   I mostly think that the items listed under "what we want from the series" are either bug reports or tactical issues and can be deferred in favor of items that are descriptive of what we want the perception of the series to be (e.g my comment on world publication vs IETF house organ and the other 4 spectrums in that list).  That comment carries forward into the "points made" section.   The list here is all over the place and I'll attempt to do an edit in the next week or so with my suggestions on what we work on first and what can and should be deferred.  

Looking forward to it!

Eliot

[1] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/rfced-future/x1OMhYw7Rm0fag_LGfCTdKUNpus/
[2] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/rfced-future/BVMr_Mo7618VcdTBkx2T3im-SzA/
[3] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/rfced-future/nAJlr9e7_ROZqPN1NomTb43iAWc/
[4] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/rfced-future/mACM0l8ASnbJkkhPxDfRSytPkww/