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Closing down SMIng WG
When announcing the closing of the WG, I propose
to use the text below. I'll wait till Wed 3pm US Eastern
to see if any IESG member has concerns or suggestions.
I wonder if I should also express that my personal
feeling/perception is that:
- Various IETF NM community members are too focused on their
own technical (corner) interrests.
- Various people seem to have played delay tactics.
Maybe that will just evoke too much "political" and ad hominem
flames... and so maybe it is better to just keep that to myself.
Thanks,
Bert
------------ tex to be used with closing of SMING WG -------
- In 1999 and 2000, the IRTF NMRG did a lot of work on a possible
SMIng (Structure of Management Information Next Generation).
The research group developed a complete new SMI language spec
and also had implementations. In addition there were tools
to convert to/from SMIv2 and tools to convert to/from other
languages like IDL etc.
- In November 2000, the SMIng WG was chartered. The WG was
specifically limted to NOT try and develop a grandiose mother
of all information/data modeling languages. Instead it was
chartered to enhance the SMIv2 and to try and cater for a
data modeling language that would re-merge the SMI and SPPI
back into one advanced data modeling language. The resulting
Management Information Modules would be able to be used by
multiuple protocols, specifically SNMP and COPS-PR.
- The WG was chartered to consider the NMRG SMIng work as base
to start from. A requirements document was the first deliverable,
to try and make sure it would address the most pressing needs
but also to limit it to doable and implementable requirements.
- The WG was originally chartered to finish by March 2002.
- The WG got bogged down (initially) by defining the requirements.
It took the WG 8 months (a year before the RFC showed up) to
deliver the RFC (3216) that describes them (renamed to "objectives"
because people worried that "requirements" would be used to "force"
various "requirements" into a possible solution, even if the
actual solution would turn out to be un-implementable or
in-practical. In hindsight, I think this were serious signs
of trouble in the WG.).
- The WG did not show (even rough) consensus on using SMIng as the
base to start from. So the WG then went into a "submission of
proposals" and later "selection" process. I believe this did
bring good discussions into the WG, but it took a long time
before a consensus was formed. The consensus I believe was to
"merge the SMI-DS and the SMIng proposals".
- However, when trying to work out that consensus, the WG seemed
to have tired of the work. Not enough volunteers could be found
to actually write the "merged" document set and to drive it
to conclusion. During that process, it turned out that various
core contributors continued to have serious concenrs about some
of there original ideas/concerns not being considered/addressed.
- It all culminated to a "un-volunteering" at the 55th IETF in
November 2002. Instead of various members volunteering to help
finish the documents that were agreed to by the WG, one of the
volunteers "un-volunteered" some of the documents he had earlier
volunteered to work on. The WG was warned soon afterwards that
some better consensus, energy and effort towards a good result
was needed in order to continue its work.
- We are now 2 years and 4 months after the WG started and we have
seen no new initiatives in the WG for the last 4 months.
What a shame that we have wasted more than two years without
any results. And that while we had such a great base (The NMRG
SMIng documents) to start from.
- If the NMRG wants to publish the original SMIng docs as experimental
or informational RFCs, they should go ahead and do so, so that we
at least keep some record of a specification and implementaion
that once was available.