Re: Complaint to IAB regarding a declaration of consensus to adopt a non-hybrid draft

I haste to say I told you so [1], but the fact that the word "adopt" is an undefined term in the IETF standards process was always going to come back and bite us one day.

In some contexts, the word "adopt" in reference to a document is equivalent to the word "approve". In the IETF context, it means something more like "let's talk about it". It definitely does not imply approval. That is well explained in RFC 7221, but that isn't a formal part of the standards process because it isn't a BCP.

There hasn't been much interest in further clarifying that "adopt" doesn't mean "approve" [2], but it doesn't.

Since adoption doesn't mean or imply approval, technical aspects of an adopted draft really don't need to be discussed except on the WG list and are certainly irrelevant to a procedural appeal.

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-carpenter-gendispatch-draft-adoption/
[2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-carpenter-gendispatch-rfc7221bis/

Regards/Ngā mihi
    Brian Carpenter