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Re: FW: AD response to Site-Local Appeal
[Note: This message is being sent in my role as an IPv6 WG chair.
I have already recused myself from IESG consideration of Tony
Hain's appeal and will not participate in this discussion as an
Internet AD.]
Hi Robert,
I'd like to respond to a few of the things that you mentioned in
your message:
At 09:23 PM 8/1/2003 +0700, Robert Elz wrote:
First, RFC2418 (aka BCP 25) (WG procedures) requires...
For coordinated, structured WG interactions, the Chair(s) MUST
publish a draft agenda well in advance of the actual session.
The agenda of the March 2003 ipv6 WG meeting was sent to the mailing
list on March 14. The WG meetings were on March 17 & 20. "Well
in advance". Hmmm...
An initial draft agenda, which did list the local addressing
topic, was sent to the mailing list on March 3rd. The final
agenda was posted on March 14th.
Then
The minutes shall
be submitted in printable ASCII text for publication in the IETF
Proceedings, and for posting in the IETF Directories and are to be
sent to: minutes@ietf.org
As best I can tell, no minutes have been submitted for that meeting
(even though the next meeting has already been completed). Draft
minutes were sent to the mailing list (March 28), but nothing further
seems to have been done. They certainly don't appear in the normal
IETF places for WG meeting minutes (as for example, the November 2002
minutes do).
Due to a clerical error on our part, the minutes were not submitted
to the secretariat on time. However, they were sent to the mailing
list (on March 28th, as you indicate) and there were no comments
indicating errors or omissions.
So, everyone on the mailing list has had access to the minutes since
March 28th (less than two weeks after the meeting).
Although the minutes were submitted to the secretariat late, they
were submitted. We are not sure why they have not been posted to
the proceedings web page. This is currently being investigated.
Then, again from rfc2418:
In determining the balance, the WG must ensure that
its process does not serve to exclude contribution by email-only
participants. Decisions reached during a face-to-face meeting about
topics or issues which have not been discussed on the mailing list,
or are significantly different from previously arrived mailing list
consensus MUST be reviewed on the mailing list.
First from that note, "reviewed" on the mailing list, not "continued
there".
RFC2418 also says:
In the case where a consensus which has been reached during a
face-to-face meeting is being verified on a mailing list the
people who were in the meeting and expressed agreement must be
taken into account. If there were 100 people in a meeting and
only a few people on the mailing list disagree with the consensus
of the meeting then the consensus should be seen as being verified.
So, RFC 2418 does not indicate that the entire consensus call should
be re-done on the mailing list. In fact, it explicitly states that
the number of people involved in the face-to-face consensus "must be
taken into account" in the final determination.
Before we get to that though, there's the issue of whether the "deprecate
site local" was a new issue, or one that had been dragging along forever.
The concept of deprecating site-local addressing had been under
discussion for some time. In particular, removing site-local
addresses from the architecture was discussed as an option at the
IPv6 WG meeting in Atlanta in November 2002, and proposed as an
alternative in an I-D that I published in December 2002. So, this
was certainly not a new topic of discussion for anyone who had
been following the IPv6 WG since November 2002.
In Atlanta, there was consensus in the WG to pursue a course
of action that involved limiting the use of site-local
addressing in some way. This course was pursued for a few
months, with a few different proposals circulated for how to
limit the use of site-local addressing. Bob and I presented
a summary/comparison of these proposals in SF, and we honestly
believed that the WG would choose between those proposals.
To our surprise, however, the consensus of those attending
the meeting in San Francisco was that all of the proposals to
limit the use of site-locals still had substantial problems.
So, we reached consensus to move in the direction of deprecating
site-local unicast addressing, and that is the course that we
are pursuing now.
This email asks those that were NOT present at the Thursday IPv6
meeting in SF to express their opinions on a question that was
asked of the room. If you expressed an opinion on this issue in
SF you can skip this message; in any case you MUST NOT respond to
this query.
That is, no-one was permitted to have had a change of mind.
This is incorrect. One person did publicly change his mind (David
Borman, in a message sent to the list on April 4th), and this
was publicly acknowledged and supported in mail sent by me on
April 5th. No one else indicated a desire to change his/her mind.
One may
speculate as to why this "unusual" approach was taken, and perhaps
reach the conclusion that having achieved a large majority (reported in
the draft minutes as 102 to 20) in favour of the "deprecate site local"
decision, they didn't want to risk any of that majority being dropped
away, or any of the people who supported it, not really being on the
ipv6 list, and so not normally a part of the working group or its
decision making process (which isn't to say anyone should be excluded,
anyone can join the list, and if, knowing the issue was to be discussed
there, they had a strong opinion upon it, anyone could have joined the
list to express that opinion).
Please see the RFC 2418 text quoted above. RFC 2418 _requires_ that
the number of people who reached consensus in the meeting room must
be taken into account when the consensus is reviewed on the list.
Further, even that assumes that taking votes is the way the IETF
operates. That would not often be regarded as a normal way to do
things. Normally, WGs take "straw polls" to determine whether
just about everyone agrees with a point, or disagrees, or whether
there's a serious split. Here, had this been regarded as a straw
poll, then even with 155 to 56 numbers, "serious split" and "no consensus"
would have been the only reasonable result.
It is strange that you argue both that:
(1) Consensus is not determined by voting or numbers.
-AND-
(2) These numbers aren't good enough to constitute
consensus.
The straw poll results were not the only thing that the WG
chairs considered in determining WG consensus on this issue,
We considered the hundreds of e-mail messages that had been
generated on the IPv6 mailing list regarding this subject over
several months, we considered the comments and discussion on
this topic from the face-to-face IPv6 WG meeting, and we also
considered the comments that people made regarding why they
indicated YES or NO in response to our straw poll.
Based on all of this input, we determined that (in our best
judgement) there was a consensus of the IPv6 WG to pursue a
specific course of action. This course of action involves
doing multiple things in parallel that will eventually result
in deprecating site-local unicast addressing and replacing it
with a non-ambiguous local addressing scheme (not necessarily
in that order). We believe that we correctly determined the
consensus of the WG, because very few people have objected to
our consensus statement since it was published on April 9th.
Furthermore, the WG seems to be productively engaged in carrying
out the action plan that we indicated in our consensus e-mail.
I won't argue that we followed every process in RFC 2418 to
perfection, and we should strive to do better in the future,
especially regarding the timeliness of our agenda and minutes.
But, I do not believe that our minor process violations materially
affected the ability of anyone who was involved in the IPv6 WG in
March and April of 2003 (via email and/or in-person) to participate
in this discussion, understand what was going on, or voice his/her
opinion on this issue. And, I believe that we took all of those
opinions, regardless of how they were voiced, into consideration
as part of our consensus determination.
This may not seem very important, as there is no apparent outcome from
this decision.
The outcome from this decision is that our editors are currently
updating WG documents in accordance with the direction that
was agreed upon by the WG. In my opinion, it does require
WG consensus to make a major change to a WG work item, such as
the scoped address architecture.
What is important though is that the WG not be railroaded
into agreeing to a later document (which is rumoured to be going to be
written one day) with the argument that the WG already reached consensus
that this be done, and that no re-opening of that issue will be permitted
(which is what I anticipate may happen). That is, if this planned
document ever appears, the only discussion allowed may be whether or
not it says the right things to implement the supposed consensus, and not
whether or not the document itself is a good thing to publish. That
cannot be allowed to happen, and certainly not based upon the flawed
processes in this particular instance.
I agree. This cannot be allowed to happen, and there is no
intention of handling the situation this way. We have
_repeatedly_ indicated that the March/April decision was
only about the general course of action that the we would
pursue.
All documents produced as part of this course of action will
be subject to discussion by the WG, and they will go through
WG last call, etc. In keeping with normal IETF processes,
these documents won't be sent to the IESG unless they
represent the consensus of the WG at that time.
Finally, while not strictly relevant to the current question, you may
also wish to know that on April 10 (the day after the decision was
announced), I sent a message to each of the WG chairs (and copied to the
WG mailing list - Message-id: <11997.1049967846@munnari.OZ.AU>) in which
I asked ...
You can expect an appeal against the decision that there is rough
consensus here. What there is, is a debate. You can treat this
message as an official request to the WG chairs that they reconsider
the stated position. That's the first step ...
The WG chairs did not bother to reply to any of the issues raised in
that message. Or at least, they have not so far.
I did reply to this message, also on April 10th, just a few hours
after you sent it. A multi-person discussion ensued, and I tried to
be responsive to the points raised in that discussion. It wasn't
my intention to be non-responsive, and I am sorry if you found my
response inadequate.
It is my hope that we can re-focus this discussion on making the
right technical decisions within the IPv6 WG moving forward. I
would encourage you to read the current documents, which include:
- The latest scoped address architecture (currently
a WG I-D)
- Bob Hinden's local addressing proposal (accepted as
a WG I-D, but not republished yet)
- The upcoming updates to the local addressing
requirements, authored by Fred Templin and
Tony Hain (should be available very soon).
Your technical input on these documents would be very welcome.
Margaret