Re: deadlock problem

[Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 01:02:49PM -0400, RJ Atkinson wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 12:24 America/Montreal, Brian E Carpenter 
> wrote:
> >True, unless the IAB chooses to exercise common sense.
> 
> Brian,
> 
> 	Lack of common sense has never been evident on the IAB, AFAIK.
> 
> 	Despite that, deadlock HAS been evident.  One might legitimately
> abstain for common sense reasons.  Individuals might legitimately have
> different views on a given candidate for common sense reasons.  The
> intersection of that has lead to deadlock under the current process rule
> (and would lead to deadlock on the relevant section of the IAB Charter's
> decision process, as several folks have outlined to this list).

Ran,

I'm not too worried about this.  *If* the IAB were to deadlock badly
enough that IESG members could not be seated in time for the first
IETF meeting, it would look really bad and be very embarassing for the
IAB ---- and no doubt, the following year's nomcom would be asking
some very hard questions about the sort of people that were serving on
the IAB such that the process could break down so badly.  At the very
least, such a breakdown would likely cause the IAB to seriously
reconsider concerning its own internal processes that allowed such a
deadlock to happen in the first place.

So if it happens, it can be fixed, either by fixing the IAB
procedures, or by having the following year's nomcom fix the personnel
problem.  And if it doesn't happen, well, then we didn't need to fix
anything, did we?  :-)

So I'd just remove the rule, and let each confirming body take the
responsibility (and part of responsibilty is the possibility of
getting whacked if you screw up) determine its own decision-making
procedures.

						- Ted