Subject: [Ietf-and-github] Meeting deadlines

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 13:39:50 -0800

Hi,

I've always seen the Internet-Draft cutoff before an IETF meeting as
serving two purposes:

1) prevent the publishing staff from being overwhelmed
2) prevent people from springing revisions and new drafts at the last minute

Using GitHub routes around both of these issues. I'm not sure if that's
good or bad, but it seems like something to take into consideration.

thanks,
Rob

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From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 17:40:57 -0500

Rob,

There is a third purpose - to give WG participants enough time to read the
relevant drafts before arriving at the meeting (you may see that as a
corollary to your second purpose).

Just speaking as a WG chair, it's obviously up to each WG to decide how to
do their work. However, I expect that a popular choice would be that the
revision of a draft that is to be discussed at a WG meeting be the version
on the datatracker (not in GitHub), and that the IETF's submission cutoff
be respected. Which would require the designated editor to upload the
designated revision to the datatracker prior to the deadline.

Of course, there's no restriction to work continuing on GitHub following
the deadline, but any post-deadline revisions would not be up for
discussion except as comments from the floor on the datatracker version of
the draft.

Cheers,
Andy

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 4:40 PM Rob Sayre <[email-masked]> wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-and-github mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-and-github
>

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From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 14:50:19 -0800

> corollary to your second purpose).

Yes, definitely.

> designated revision to the datatracker prior to the deadline.

I don't the flexibility is good or bad. It seems like using GitHub right up
until the meeting could be really efficient, but also allow more bad
behavior from chairs, editors, etc.

thanks,
Rob

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From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 01:55:25 +0000

I always thought that the main point of the deadline was, yes, to give people time to read and to establish a baseline for discussion during the sessions.

Strong +1 to what Andy wrote.

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From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 01:57:46 +0000

> It seems like using GitHub right up until the meeting could be really efficient

For those collaborating on documents, yes it can be.
For those trying to follow along and participate – ESPECIALLY for those involved in multiple working groups – it seems pretty horrible.

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From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 18:05:58 -0800

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 5:57 PM Salz, Rich <[email-masked]> wrote:

> For those trying to follow along and participate – ESPECIALLY for those
> involved in multiple working groups – it seems pretty horrible.
>

Hi,

I agree with your assessment. I meant to describe the reality. Personally,
I don't care about the IETF meeting deadlines, because I don't plan on ever
attending another meeting. :)

thanks,
Rob

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From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 21:36:41 -0800

HI,

I thought I would note that this variance did occur in the TLSWG during
this last meeting.

I spent the time to suggest some changes that went into
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-esni-05, published right at the
deadline. These were obsoleted by the changes proposed in
https://github.com/tlswg/draft-ietf-tls-esni/pull/196 (one day after the
deadline). I don't object to the changes, and in fact suggested encrypting
everything possible on the list.

However, I wasted my time suggesting changes to draft-ietf-tls-esni, and it
seems likely that the authors and some chairs already knew this was coming.
The updated document is going to be called draft-ietf-tls-echo, I think. In
this case, I think the issue is an undeclared(?) design team interacting in
an unfortunate way with the draft deadline, and then using github afterward.

thanks,
Rob

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From: "Christopher Wood" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 13:12:23 -0800

On Sat, Nov 23, 2019, at 9:36 PM, Rob Sayre wrote:
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-esni-05, published right at 
> the deadline. These were obsoleted by the changes proposed in 
> https://github.com/tlswg/draft-ietf-tls-esni/pull/196 (one day after 
> the deadline). I don't object to the changes, and in fact suggested 
> encrypting everything possible on the list.
> 
> However, I wasted my time suggesting changes to draft-ietf-tls-esni, 
> and it seems likely that the authors and some chairs already knew this 
> was coming. The updated document is going to be called 
> draft-ietf-tls-echo, I think. In this case, I think the issue is an 
> undeclared(?) design team interacting in an unfortunate way with the 
> draft deadline, and then using github afterward.

Would you mind elaborating on this claim? In what way was the work unfortunate? What could have been done differently?

Best,
Chris (no hats)

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From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 14:06:00 -0800

On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 1:12 PM Christopher Wood <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> Would you mind elaborating on this claim? In what way was the work
> unfortunate? What could have been done differently?
>

Oh, I didn't mean the work was unfortunate, just the process (it was kind
of confusing and opaque). If I had a real problem with the work, I would
raise it in the TLS WG.

Up thread, we were discussing whether github activity right up to a meeting
could keep everyone from being on the same page. I stated I wasn't sure if
it was good or bad, others felt the deadline imposed by the old draft-only
process was helpful if they had to attend a lot of WG meetings. In this
case, some edits I suggested for draft-05 were discarded in a large github
PR before the meeting. I'm fine with that--I just wanted to point out that
the meeting ended up discussing that PR rather than the draft.

thanks,
Rob