RE: Moving right along ...

[John Drake <jdrake@calient.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Zhi-Wei Lin [mailto:zwlin@lucent.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 12:31 AM
To: Kireeti Kompella
Cc: ccamp@ops.ietf.org
Subject: Re: Moving right along ...

SNIPPED 

<z>Yes, I agree it is a strong statement. But I think it's warranted.
Yes, it solves a problem, but there are many differnet solutions of
which Yangguang mentioned one such. Who made these decisions to include?
Is there a need to look at both these (and possibly other) methods first
prior to including in a WG document? IETF is a public standards forum
where discussions on what is chosen is done in public for everyone's
benefit, and therefore this decision should be considered by everyone
prior to adding anything...</z>


JD:  If a valid technical issue is raised, the authors of a draft attempt
to deal with it and their efforts are documented in a subsequent version
of the draft.  If the proposed solution is inadequate or someone has a 
better solution, then the proposed solution is either changed or fixed.

I don't think an exhaustive public discussion of every possible solution
is particularly useful.  And as has been pointed out, we're dealing with
rough consensus;  this means that we don't necessarily need to get your
approval for everything that we do.


> > Is it correct to simply include content of individual drafts into
> > a WG draft that is in last call without adequate data on whether it
> > handles all the different cases?
> 
> Clearly not.  Are you suggesting that that was what was done?
> 
> It is a judgment call to include significant new material into a
> document in last call.  In this instance, handling restart of the
> control plane is of sufficient importance to warrant inclusion.
> That said, this inclusion happened some time ago (late July);
> your comment would have been more timely then.
> 
> In any case, it would be more helpful if you pointed out
> scenarios that are missing, and even better if you had concrete
> suggestions to fix things.
> 

<z>I think Yangguang mentioned some. If you look back at the email
archive, I think some folks from Netplane and others also made some
comments. And yes, these comments were made when the resync stuff was
first added. The comments were simply not addressed adequately (in my
opinion of course).</z>


JD:  And Fong answered the questions completely.


<z>Yes, I agree with "rough consensus" (in a way), but if things that
are added are unclear or doesn't seem to address any requirements, and
the private discussions are just that: a private discussion. I would
think that the authors need to have these discussions in the open to get
as much participation and "buy-in" as possible.

For example, I've commented on the "switching type" as part of signaling
for some time, and never really understand why this was added. Yes,
there has been some explanations, but I don't think those are reasons
for adding. It sounds like it is something that "seems" to be
reasonable. If something can be added because it "seems" reasonable,
then does that mean if I think there is something that "seems"
reasonable, the authors would be compelled to add these or who makes the
decision to add these?


JD:  The authors add it and invite comments and criticism.  I have made
several attempts to explain switching type to you, with no apparent success.
I haven't had this problem explaining it to anyone else.
   

Of course, Juergen has provided some examples of issues as well, so
those still need to be resolved. And I believe they need to be resolved
in the open public email list so that everyone understand the decisions.
Let's open up the commenting and decision process to the "common folks"
like myself! 
</z>


JD:  The attempt was made to address Juergen's comments.  It would be nice
for him, rather than you, to indicate whether they were adequately
addressed.
As for you second point, we'd love to see valid technical issues and good
technical solutions from you or anyone else.  As St Francis said, he would
accept wisdom regardless of the source.