Subject: confession

From: Paul Vixie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 11:47:32 -0700

because the events of my day have led me to ruminate on the probability
that when someone makes an accusation it will ultimately turn out that
the accuser is also somehow guilty of the same behaviour, i wanted to
confess a process violation i took part in a few months ago.

there was this concall.  randy and olafur and markk and myself and some
other folks whose names escape me got together on a concall and talked
about DS and opt-in.  the long and the short of it were (a) drafts were
to be updated, (b) schedules were agreed to, and (c) a very short
summary was sent to namedroppers, showing conclusions but not the paths
untaken nor the precise reasoning which had led to those conclusions.

no notice was given on namedroppers@ that interested parties were going
to meet outside the ietf's meeting halls and mailing lists.  yet the
course of the wg's affairs was dramatically shifted by the meeting.

my understanding of ietf is probably naive, but by that understanding,
we did not follow the official process in several ways.  number one, a
meeting consisting of the wg chairs and the document authors should've
been announced so that other interested parties could observe or attend,
and number two, detailed notes about who said what and who convinced whom
ought to have been published.  number three, the results should have been
a series of recommendations to be discussed/debated on the mailing list,
rather than a series of decisions adopted by the wg chairs and doc authors,
and sending a summary of those decisions was an unacceptable substitute.

i apologize for my part in this, and i assure you all, i won't do it again.

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From: Bill Woodcock <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 12:02:04 -0700 (PDT)

> i want to confess a process violation i took part in a few months ago.
    > there was this concall...

Okay, that's it!  Turn in the keys to your black helicopter!

                                -Bill

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 12:13:48 -0700

At 11:47 AM 6/12/2002 -0700, Paul Vixie wrote:
>rather than a series of decisions adopted by the wg chairs and doc authors

Paul, for IETF situations that get to this stage of tension, your note is 
unusual and refreshing.  Perhaps it is your claimed naivete about the IETF 
that permits you to take such a helpful step.  In any event many thanks for 
your posting.

I'll reiterate that I think that numbers one and two were not at all 
problematic.

Number three is easily heeded and ought to permit the wg to move forward.

d/

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Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850

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From: Paul Vixie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 18:23:04 -0700

> >... we did not follow the official process in several ways.  number one,
> >meeting ... should've been announced ...; number two, detailed notes ...;
> >number three, ... should have been ... recommendations rather than ...
> >decisions adopted by the wg chairs and doc authors
> 
> ... I'll reiterate that I think that numbers one and two were not at all 
> problematic.
> 

i disagree, since goal number three was explicitly stated, and methods one
and two were explicitly adopted in the furtherence of number three.  we did
a bad thing, and we did it on purpose, and we knew in advance that it was bad.

come to find out that's the same way a6/dname was dealt with, and now opt-in.

this isn't just sour grapes on my part as in "it's fine to break the rules
as long as you get my complicity in advance, which wasn't done for a6/dname
and this recent opt-in thing."  it's a simpler case of "i thought the chairs
both knew what the heck they were doing and it now turns out otherwise."

(i guess that'll be the last time anybody hands ME a secret decoder ring!)

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 19:03:46 -0700

>a bad thing, and we did it on purpose, and we knew in advance that it was bad.

Paul,

Indeed there might be an interesting discussion to have over in the poised 
world.  Your suggestion of a multi-working group pattern will be worth 
exploring there.

However I was not so much misunderstanding your previous point about a true 
conspiracy as I was  (and am) suggesting that we can get the Right Thing 
done now and move one, at least for the current effort.

That said, we are still left with no management guidance as to when the 
pending issues will be summarized for the working group, thought it has 
been a week since the group was told one would be produced.  For that 
matter, we do not know whether the RobRoy summary will be the full set of 
pending items.

d/

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