Re: Fw: WG Review: Provisioning Registry Protocol (provreg)

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

Edward,

At 05:17 PM 2/3/2001 -0500, Edward Lewis wrote:
>The reason I removed the mention of the draft is that we are not here to
>bless a particular protocol generated outside the working group, but rather
>to generate a protocol in full view of the IETF.  Scott's proposals are
>fine starting points, but if there happens to be a better proposal out
>there, we aren't going to stop it.

1.  If there happened to be a better proposal, then we would have heard 
about it by now.

2.  As I noted earlier, the existing specification has already received 
quite a bit of diverse review... and support.  That does not mean it needs 
no changes.  Rather it means that there is good reason to believe that it 
is a solid base, from which relatively minor changes are likely.  Yes, this 
all depends upon group consensus, but there is good evidence that consensus 
exists for using it as the base.

3.  There is extensive history with having an IETF working group charter 
explicitly cite that a particular draft proposal will be used as a 
base.  Yes, there are times when a working group starts with an empty slate 
and does all the work from scratch; but it is often true that a detailed 
proposal exists and has strong enough support to be used as the base.  This 
is one of those cases.  That was why I put the language in the original 
draft charter.

4.  So as I noted earlier, inviting proposals now is going to have only the 
effect of adding delay.


>Yes, there exists the possibility that other proposals may come along.

"May" come along.    If there were a raging debate about paradigms and 
choices and if there were multiple detailed specifications, citing one in 
the charter would be inappropriate.  That is not the case, here.


>But if the consensus is that there is a deadline

1.  I thought that we had seen multiple confirmations on the list of some 
urgency.

2.  The milestone dates were chosen to be aggressive, based both on the 
sense of urgency and the sense that Scott's proposal had strong support as 
a base.

What changed?


> >In point of fact, Scott's proposal has already received quite extensive
> >review from, from very different perspectives, and the consensus seems to
> >be that it is an excellent starting point.
>
>This makes it (the requirements draft) a shoo-in as a WG document.  It is
>also less likely that there will be an alternative requirements draft
>coming in that could delay consensus on the requirements.

I am pressing this issue forcefully for a basic concern about working group 
management.  The charter is a contract and the language of the charter is 
often very useful for helping to eliminate distracting discussion.  Hence, 
the charter can be very useful for ensuring group focus.

By eliminating the citation of Scott's draft as the base you are inviting 
several months of design theory debates.

d/

----------
Dave Crocker   <mailto:dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg Consulting   <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel: +1.408.246.8253;   fax: +1.408.273.6464