RE: Summary of "working group meeting"

Julian Reschke writes:

> At this point, I think it's up to the working group chairs to 
> state how they want to continue with this WG (or, if they 
> don't indend to, that as well). What should be obvious is 
> that we need to change a lot of things if we want to fulfill 
> what's been outlined in the charter.

I'm not too surprised at the lack of detailed discussion at the WG meeting
-- this is clearly attributable to the lack of an agenda, and the lack of
consensus on which document to push forward at present.

The deeper issue is whether this remains a useful working group. This
depends, in turn, on whether the group is able to perform useful work (I am
not as concerned about meeting deadlines, so long as work is progressing).

My personal feeling is that the current working group is able to perform
useful work. The recent discussion on the bind specification highlights
this, and I'll also point to the fact that we've been able to issue about an
RFC a year for the past few years. This is pretty good for a volunteer
organization, and better than many other IETF WGs.

Some point to the lack of review of the bind specification in last call. I
think this is largely due to current implementors on the list not generally
viewing that specification as a priority, and hence the main parties of
interest are the specification editors and one or two other long-time
contributors. I would not view this lack of last-call review as indicative
of the WG's inability to make progress.

My personal feeling is that this working group needs firm direction from its
chairs on what to work on next, and it also needs commitment to get
completed drafts through the approval process. I've volunteered to work on
the bind specification to get it to RFC status. Beyond this, the most
constructive step is to determine which draft to work on next.

My vote is for the quota protocol, since we have at least two very
interested implementors who want to see this completed.

- Jim

PS - When I was chair, it was rare to get meeting minutes out very quickly.
It's boring, tedious work.

Received on Thursday, 17 March 2005 01:22:55 UTC