Re: making progress on State-Info

Larry Masinter:
>In the IETF, the WG chairs seem to have the perogative to declaring
>whether or not the WG has reached 'rouch consensus'. If you disagree
>with the WG chairs on this issue, you may appeal this decision to the
>area directorate if you can't come to some resolution with the WG
>chairs first.

I have no problems with the WG chairs claiming the right to declare
rough consensus, _if they indeed plan to regularly exercise that
right_.

In at least the last half year, I have never seen the WG chairs take a
leading role in the consensus game, which resulted in the WG reverting
to "consensus by lack of discussion" mode as Shel Kaphan described.

If the chairs want to take the effort to let this WG function as
described in the IETF rulebooks again, they have my full support.

I have reported to you that we did indeed reach rough "consensus by
lack of discussion" on the State-Info draft.  I even included a
summary of relevant issues.  The whole story can be found in the
http-wg and www-talk archives.

While I think that the State-Info draft could be decided on now,
waiting until the end of January 96 is acceptable.

>As far as I am concerned, there is no 'rough consensus' on any of the
>issues for which we have constituted subgroups; this includes 'state
>info'.

If you mean by this that the WG chairs never declared consensus, I
agree.

>I would appreciate it if WG members would avoid declaring or denying
>the existance of 'consensus' on any of these issues.

I could live with that.  Please tell me how to refer to the "lack of
discussion" type of consensus we have had in the past.  I am not
prepared to have the whole privacy discussion we had on www-talk and
html-wg last summer again, this time in a more formal setting.

>The members of the subgroup on 'state management' are:
>
>	Dave Kristol, Rohit Khare, Scott Powers
>
>If you would like to join this subgroup, please contact those people.

Thank you, I will.


One other thing: Roy Fielding recently said on this list:

| "Rough consensus" can only be tested by polling the list.
|To date, the only piece of HTTP that has ever gained "rough consensus"
|for includion in HTTP/1.1 is the Host header field and those features
|which already exist in HTTP/1.0 (by definition).

Would you (the WG chairs) please either confirm or deny this?

Koen.

Received on Saturday, 9 December 1995 04:41:33 UTC