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From: jamsden@us.ibm.com
To: chair@ietf.org, moore@cs.utk.edu, Patrik Fältström <paf@swip.net>, ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
Message-ID: <85256887.00675D94.00@d54mta03.raleigh.ibm.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:47:27 -0500
Subject: Delta-V Design Team Meetings
I would like to take a moment to address a very unfortunate
misunderstanding that resulted from a posting I made to the Delta-V mailing
list concerning the design team meeting scheduled for this week, and the
IETF meeting in Adelaide. On Feb 7, I sent the following note to
ietf-dav-versioning@ietf.org:
<<
We have decided not to hold a DELTA-V meeting at Adelaide because of travel
expense and the small number of people who could attend. Our next
face-to-face meeting is being held in Redmond WA Feb 16 and 17. See below
for details. Patrik, could you forward to Ned and send his email for future
reference? Thanks.
>>
This note was sent out in a hurry, and I did not take the time read it with
a sensitivity toward our International community and the impression that it
might leave. Clearly the reference to the face-to-face design team meeting
could be viewed as scheduling an alternative to meeting in Adelaide in
order to minimize cost an inconvenience for US participants. Let me
heartily apologize for my haste and insensitivity, and assure you that this
was absolutely not the intent. The February design team meeting was
actually scheduled at our December IETF meeting, notification was published
in the meeting minutes, and a reminder went out on January 17 which was
included at the bottom of the previous note. So I hope you see that we did
not schedule a design team meeting as an alternative to a working group
meeting at Adelaide . The reason for not holding a Delta-V WG meeting at
Adelaide was simply because there didn't appear to be sufficient
attendance.
Let me attempt to clarify how the Delta-V working group intended to do its
work. We wanted to split the work between the design team and the working
group and alternate the meetings. Design team meetings would be held
between working group meetings to provide working drafts and candidate
resolutions of issues for consideration by the working group at large. All
working group meetings would be held during IETF meetings to maximize
participation by all members and leverage synergy with other working
groups. Design team meetings are open to any working group member. All we
request is that participants come prepared for hard work. The meetings
rotate among the participants' sites in order to share travel expenses and
burden equally. We recently had some members join from the International
community, and would be happy to have them host a meeting.
The intent of the design team meetings is to keep the group small enough,
and including members with sufficient background, interest, and time, to
get into the details. In this context we hope to make significant progress
on the specification, discover issues, and explore candidate solutions.
Given the complexity of distributed, mutli-user, multi-version repository
managers in a loosely connected network, and the broad community we have to
support, it is absolutely necessary for us to have regular meetings at this
level. The working group on the other hand consists of a larger number of
members who participate at a higher level. We intended to use the working
group meetings to review progress, resolve issues in a broader context,
present alternatives, get valuable feedback necessary to improve the
specification, raise any further issues, and achieve consensus on the
specification. I believe this is completely consistent with RFC 2418.
Unfortunately, this misunderstanding, and other violations of IETF policy
concerning design team meetings has resulted in an IETF policy change that
may have a significant adverse effect on working group activities.
Restricting working group and design team meetings may actually decrease
International participation as fewer meetings means limiting the ability of
anyone to participate. There may be other ways to address this issue such
as telling the working groups to be sensitive to international members and
rotate their meetings among their participants. Section 3 of RFC 2418 could
be updated with applicable guidelines to ensure international participation
is addressed. This is more consistent with the spirit of RFC 2418 which is
to limit the number of rules and encourage working group activities and
participation. The risk of not getting work done at all in a volunteer
organization scattered about the globe may be greater than the risk of a
working group developing a specification in isolation or without
international participation.
Delta-V will experience significant loss in productivity if we are not able
to have these regular design team meetings. We will not be able to stay on
the charter schedule, working group participation will suffer, and we are
likely to get significant pressure from vendors depending on delivery of
the spec. In addition, these restrictions are somewhat in conflict with the
policy and spirit of RFC 2418 by restricting the ability of a working group
to manage its work given its subject area and the unique makeup of its
members. This could have an adverse effect on working group moral and
participation, and will result in reduced specification quality and delayed
schedules.
Thanks to Keith and Patrik for clarifying the issues and IETF policy, and
for helping me discover the root of the misunderstanding. I hope we can
find some way to continue having our design team meetings, which are so
important to our success, while at the same time addressing the IETF
concerns regarding International participation. I would be happy to help in
any way I can to explore possibilities. After some reconsideration, I will
be requesting a meeting slot for Delta-V at Adelaide so that we can
continue our work. Thank you for your time, and again, I apologize to you,
and especially to the Delta-V working group and design team, for any
inconvenience this misunderstanding may have caused. I really think we're
doing some great work, and look forward to seeing you all in Adelaide where
we can pick up where we left off.