[saag] Re: on derivative work rights statements in emails to Security Area mailing lists

On 22/11/25 02:33, Nico Williams wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2025 at 09:32:27PM -0300, Fernando Gont wrote:
>> On 21/11/2025 20:10, Nico Williams wrote:
>>
>> [I haven't followed this discussion or even the entire thread... but
>> happened to read this particular email]
>>
>> The statement above seems to indicate that if someone wants to do X, and it
>> can be inferred that the work will be carried out at the IETF or elsewhere,
>> it's better for the IETF to take up that work.
> 
> It's a question of the WG's participant's bandwidth and whether we'd
> rather the work have wider review.

Given an organization willing to push an idea forward, that will not be 
a stop-gap.



> The answer to the first part is
> provided by the participants who say they want to work on the item, and
> in this case the answer provided was "yes". 

Agreed. Although I'd expect that the rationale for "yes, we want to work 
on this" is based on the merit of the idea or work, rather than 
"otherwise this would be pursued elsewhere".


> As to the latter I think it
> is in fact better in this case to have more review.  But there is no
> obligation on uninterested parties to provide said review.

Getting into the habit of "let's work on this bad idea because otherwise 
it will be pursued elsewhere" is indeed a dis-incentive for reviewing. 
Eventually, the only folks that will work on reviewing the docs are:

* the ones that are "obligued to" (say, IESG reviews)
* the ones pushing the work.



>> However, that's not my understannding of how things are supposed to work:
>> IETF RFCs represent IETF consensus. And if something is known and understood
>> to be a bad idea, I do think that the IETF shouldn't work on that. If
>> anything, it's better that such work is carried out elsewhere, rather than
>> having bad ideas rubber-stamped by the IETF "because they would otherwise be
>> pursued elsewhere, anyway".
> 
> Yes.  But we don't do IETF consensus for WGs taking on work, only WG
> consensus.

Is the "adopted so that this is pursued here rather than there" 
rationale conveyed when the doc is shipped from the wg?



> IETF consensus comes very early on, when a WG is proposed,
> and near the end of the WG work item RFC publication process, at the
> IETF Last Call stage.
> 
> Essentially that means that IETF consensus killing a WG work item is
> extremely unlikely.
> 
> If you get a WG created, you'll get to publish its documents as RFCs
> provided you follow the process.  I've worked on incepting two WGs, one
> of which was somewhat controversial, so I know this from experience.

I'm not arguing you're wrong in this regard. However, that seems 
unlikely to help in raising the bar in terms of doc quality.

P.S.: I have seen docs killed by the IESG. The ongoing dicussion on the 
6man wg list re eh-limits is a fresh datapoint.

Thanks,
-- 
Fernando Gont
e-mail: [email protected]
PGP Fingerprint: 7F7F 686D 8AC9 3319 EEAD C1C8 D1D5 4B94 E301 6F01

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