Re: P followup...

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, Marshall Rose wrote:

> any AD has to ask themselves whether it is worthwhile to keep
> extending the life of a WG that hasn't published any RFCs but does
> want to keep expanding its scope.

IESG ID tracker[1] paints a rosier picture than you seem to imply:
OPES WG has one draft that has been approved for publication as an RFC
and three drafts that are already in the RFC Editor Queue. Thus, we
have a total of four drafts that are, essentially, RFCs (their
publication is a matter of routine delays outside of WG or IESG
control).

We have one draft that requires a revision. If you need any help in
that area, please let me know.

Thus, out of 5 IESG-reviewed drafts, we have 4 approved ones! This
sounds like pretty good statistics to me, but I may be missing some
information that ID tracker does not relay well (e.g., perhaps IESG
spent a lot of resources getting the first 4 drafts approved?).

> working currency comes from producing credible drafts on schedule.
> we aren't broke in that department, but we're hardly rich either.
> accordingly, i personally would not want to ask the AD for an
> extension, because i might not like the answer that comes back.
> markus may have a different perspective, naturally.

It seems to me that once we submit all remaining drafts except for P,
the working group output would look relatively good:

	- 10 drafts total
	- 4 drafts approved to become RFCs
	- 4 drafts submitted for publication
	- 1 draft requires a revision
	- 1 draft needs an extension

We should be able to submit Communications draft now, OCP Core draft
next week, and HTTP Adaptations draft in a week or two.

Given the above stats, do you think our AD is likely to object to the
working group revising the overall strategy for the P draft and
rules-related work?

> the moral, of course, is that the WG should focus on meeting the
> committments it already agreed to. everytime someone asks for
> something more, we should ask whether that will be the one thing
> that will put us over the line and on the chopping block. the way to
> avoid that, of course, is to delay non-essential items to future
> work...

I agree and am not asking for more at this time; I am asking for less.

IMO, the rules draft is the one that should be delayed/moved to the
next charter. While you may argue that the draft is essential since it
is in the current charter, I will argue that it is impossible to
produce a meaningful, complete rules draft given the _current_
charter. The charter simply lacks other essential drafts/workitems
required to make a _quality_ rules draft possible. The latter was not
clear at the time the charter was written, of course.

IMO, we should fix the true problem by moving P work to the next
charter (where those "other essential workitems" will be included),
instead of spending (wasting) time on producing a draft that would
require serious revisions later. It is the Right Thing to do, IMO.

If both Chairs agree in principle, perhaps we can think of the best
way to describe our extension and rechartering plans so that our AD is
happy with them. If both Chairs disagree, I will finish a minimalistic
P draft and would ask that we at least keep P Core work in the next
charter.

Thanks,

Alex.


[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi