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Re: IAB comments on draft-baker-liaisons-00.txt

I'm sorry that the comments have been heard as criticism of
the effort, and not as input on what we believe is needed
to call the work done.

Recap'ing what we have today:  we *have* a mechanism for submitting
non-I-D liaison communications to the IETF -- posting to the
statements@ietf.org mailing list gets the Secretariat's attention.
N.B., many such liaison communications are accepted in non-ascii
format (i.e., Word).  The problems we have had with that process
are in determining who has responsibility for responding to those
communications, and making sure that they are handled in a
reasonable timeframe.  Scott will recall that I was on the IESG calls
when various related issues were discussed:  liaison communications
being ignored or otherwise inappropriately responded to.

So there is no question that there is the need to improve our
processes, so that we may communicate more effectively with other
SDOs.

But, I see two major remaining pieces necessary to bring this
work to completion:

	1/  Addressing the very particular problem we have
	    today, which is independent of mechanisms for
	    exchanging communications:  identifying who is
	    responsible for responding to liaison communications,
	    and the scope of authority (within the IETF) for
	    individuals who emit liaison communications to other
	    SDOs.  I believe that is part of what Geoff was
	    the IESG's to sort out.

	2/  Clarifying, within this document, how this proposed
	    process fits in the overall scope of our intended
	    communications with the rest of the universe.  That is,
	    there are still times when it is appropriate for
	    other organizations, including SDO's, to put their
	    contributions together in the form of an I-D, and
	    have it considered as individual input, even as we
	    recognize that there are times when that is *not*
	    the appropriate mechanism.

Again, understand that I chose to review the document from the
standpoint of someone in J-Random-self-proclaimed-SDO desiring
to communicate with the IETF.  I can't imagine how the IDN WG
would have come to closure had the chairs had to spend their time
explaining to various organizations how this document ought to be
interpreted or was not applicable to the liaison communication they
had just submitted for discussion on the agenda.  (I cite IDN
as an example where I know there were various "standards development
organizations (SDOs), consortia, and industry fora" who were
desirous of participating through communication means more like
statements and less like IETF process).   I know that
to you it is crystal clear that these communications would only be for
organizations with which we have established formal liaison
relationships, but you might note that the document does not
in fact SAY THAT.  Hence my concern about this document leading
to DoS scenarios.

To reiterate -- these are critiques of the document.  Clearly,
in at least some cases (e.g., the last point above), the
document isn't documenting what's in your thinking, so we ought
to be able to agree that there's room for improvement in the
document?

If not, then I, too, am at a loss as to how to proceed.

Leslie.




Fred Baker wrote:

At 06:37 PM 8/15/2003 -0400, Leslie Daigle wrote:
This seems to open the door to suggesting to other SDOs that they don't need to interact with the IETF the same way as all individual participants of the IETF -- through I-Ds.

Something you might want to carefully consider and have a good answer to:

The position of some in the IETF has consistently been that any communication from another body to us should use our communication mechanisms. Any time the ITU wants to say something to us, they should use an internet draft. That draft should be expressed as a flat ASCII file, in order to avoid proprietary formats, and have certain headers and trailers describing copyrights, status for usability as a source of text, and so on.

In all fairness, it would be perfectly reasonable for other bodies, such as ITU, to insist that any communication from the IETF to them use their communication mechanisms. Any time we want to say something to the ITU, including such memoranda as a reply to an internet draft posted by a person claiming to represent the ITU, we send a meeting contribution. A meeting contribution is a file in Microsoft Word 2.0 format, on the letterhead of the company that is a sector member of the ITU which we represent, representing the collective opinion of that company on a certain topic. The exact contents of the contribution are largely irrelevant, however, as it will not be directly referred to and cannot actually be counted on has having been read. Rather, the contribution serves as a ticket for a person attending the meeting to get an opportunity to make a presentation on the concept contained therein and participate in the midnight editing sessions from which the ITU document actually results.

Yes, I have worked in certain ITU processes to develop documents; I do know whereof I speak.

If we would not like ITU and others to make what we would consider outrageous demands on how we might communicate with them, it might serve us well to consider being flexible on the manner in which they communicate with us. Inflexibility on our part does not help build a productive relationship.