Subject: [Rfced-future] Draft minutes and next meeting

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 09:45:08 +0100

Thanks to all who attended the IETF 109 meeting.

Draft minutes have been uploaded.  They are here for your perusal.  Please note that the proposed next interim meeting is December 17 at 23.00 GMT.  Could you please send any comments back to the chairs in the next three weeks?  Please note what the chairs think.  We’ll call that out separately in follow-on messages.

Minutes for IETF 109

RFC Editor Future Development Program

Chairs: Brian Rosen, Eliot Lear

Minute taker: Rich Salz (thank you, Rich).

Jabber Scribe: Brian Trammell (thank you, Brian)

Eliot opened the meeting with Note Well and Agenda Bashing. Everyone noted well and there were no bashes to the agenda at that moment.

We proceeded to discuss issues 10, 11, 12, 24, and 13. Many of the issues were linked.

Issue 10: Is there a figurehead and thought leader?

Mostly we deferred this.

Decisions for confirmation on list for Issue 10: - don't use "thought leader"

Issue 11: If there is a figurehead, is the person a paid expert in technical publishing

One person was concerned that we couldn't decide this without a more formal job description. The chairs didn't call the question for now on this, to accommodate that concern.

Issues12, 24: Is the person an advisor (RSA) or an Executive Editor (RSE)

What is the person's title?

All of the following is predicated on there being a person in the first place.

We had a lengthy discussion about the text that Brian put forth. There were a few open issues with it.

	• Mixing of the role of the expert and the chair There seemed to be a general view (not sure about consensus) that the role of the chair and the expert should be split.
	• The chairs think we have consensus that that person can raise issues
	• The chairs think there is likely rough consensus that the person does not make strategic decisions but that those are decided by the strategic body
	• The chairs think there is likely rough consensus that the person does not direct the RPC/REP.
The chair asked the question: what if this person is viewed as a senior member of the RPC/Tooling team?

There were some positive comments, but not a lot of discussion. One comment made was that much of the work that is needed is "grunt work", in terms of drafting and managing draft progression for proposals. Russ pointed out that this wasn't particularly an issue in the context of earlier work. We also looked at a hypothetical that was raised about tooling, just to see how the pieces might fit together.

Where we left it: people should share their views about how they see the interface between the RPC and the strategy body functioning.

13: Is decision making in the strategy body open to all?

Early in the course of the discussion, it became clear that people disliked the terminology. People prefer the "board model" to "closed model” (used in these minutes from this point).

Eliot presented some slideware on this, characterizing the choices, for purposes of discussion, noting that people were entirely free to agree, disagree, or use their own characterizations. One note about the slides: anything written in red is intended to indicate Eliot's view that there is no consensus on a matter.

One point made and reiterated was that even if a board model is chosen, the decision process has to be transparent, without decisions happening in back rooms.

	• The chairs think that everybody agrees that there is some strategic body
	• The chairs think that strategic decisions get documented in RFCs
		• but we're not sure if this has been sufficiently discussed and may need its own issue
	• The chairs think that there is consensus that the strategic body is open to all to engage openly, and that meetings should be open, minuted, agendas posted.
	• The chairs think that the only point of disagreement is who has decision-making power: is it the board or an open WG?
One of the points of discussion was who to hold accountable if things go wrong. One person expressed a desire for the board model based on being able to hold some group of people accountable.

The two approaches presented were open membership to decision making and closed membership for decision making, or a board of appointed people or the community. There was no consensus for either open or board model yet.

One concern raised was that an open group model with a weak RS[EA] would be problematic. This linked to an issue that was going on in the jabber room, which is how consensus is declared in an open group. We did not discuss how decisions are made in the board model. One hybrid model discussed in the jabber was the idea that you have appointed people manage the consensus call, similar to the way that the IESG judges community consensus.

Where we left it: the chair asked that people post to the list what their preferences are, and also what would make their lesser preferred choice(s) more pallatable.

Getting to a draft

The chair suggested that as we begin to document agreement points we should have a draft so that people can clearly see what they're agreeing to, or raise issues. He suggested that we start with a skeleton and then include items that we have consensus on. If the text then needs to be wordsmithed, fine. There were no strong objections. One person raised half a concern, another noted that we must be careful not to paper over issues. The chairs noted that they would be very conservative in calling consensus for that purpose.

That doesn't mean we have no consensus. There are a number of points listed in the tracker on which we do. The chairs propose to find a stuckee for this purpose.

Meeting timing and operating methods

We had said we would meet every four weeks, accomodating global timezones. We had said that every issue would be aired in person at least once. We want to modify that to say that if an issue can be closed with clear consensus, then it wouldn't not need discussion. The room agreed under the following parameters:

Clear beginning and end of discussion period for purposes of calling discussion (BIG BOLD BRIGHT WORDS IN SUBJECT LINE or similar). We will be conservative in calling consensus.

We agreed to hold our next interim on 17 Dec 23.00 GMT

AOB

None.