Re: Alternative (H2)

[RJ Atkinson <rja@extremenetworks.com>]

On Friday, May 30, 2003, at 05:36 America/Montreal, Robert Elz wrote:
> It sounds like we agree - I just don't think we need all those words to
> get to the desired result.   That is, it isn't our business to care 
> what
> the confirming body's rules for decision making are, in any sense at 
> all,
> nor to even enquire whether they have any.   All that matters to us is
> whether or not they actually have confirmed the slate of candidates, 
> not
> how they got there.

We *do* care that the Confirming Body doesn't deadlock without
any decision, which is known to have happened.  And I think that
deadlock was not the result of putting an inappropriate/unwise
set of people onto that Confirming Body.  Your mileage might vary.
I was there.

That deadlock would have occurred under the rules of the previous 
Nomcom RFC
(which were the rules actually applied) or under the normal IAB rule for
decision-making  (which is correctly rigged to NOP when there is 
contention[1],
see IAB Charter RFC to see those current default rule).

So Harald's assessment is quite correct IMHO:
	- As soon as IAB creates their own rules, the contingent rule
	  no longer applies.
	- Until then, we at least eliminate the deadlock state that is
	  currently legislated.

The anxiety you seem to be concerned about -- excessive legislation
of rules -- is actually *fixed* by H2, not made worse by it.

And as Scott Bradner correctly observed a week or so back, we've done
a tremendous amount of collective wordsmithing to end up with H2.  Yet
more wordsmithing of H2 is unlikely to help in any meaningful way.

IMHO, we need to just adopt the H2 text as replacement for the current
broken text and move forward with identifying/resolving any other open
issues with this draft.

Ran

[1] On architectural matters, for example, if there is no consensus 
either
way inside the IAB on some issue, it is far better to do nothing than to
make a statement which might be seriously flawed technically.