Subject: [rtcweb] Interim meeting and way forward

From: Gonzalo Camarillo <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:45:04 +0200

Folks,

first of all, I hope everybody has already managed to get back home
after the storm. Also, I want to thank Hadriel and Acme for being great
hosts. The information flow, the meeting facilities, the catering, the
pullovers, and everything else was just perfect.

With respect to the technical work that got done in Boston and, more
importantly, that remains to be done, I want to share a few thoughts
with the group.

A fact that is obvious but some of us sometimes forget about is that
RTCWeb, as any other technology, has a window of opportunity. The
usefulness and relevance of any standards we develop in this area will
be extremely high within that window, but will decrease dramatically if
the window closes (e.g., if too many new applications out there are
based on non-standard mechanisms).

While we have everything in the group to meet the relevant market's
deadlines, we should keep them in mind nevertheless. In particular, we
are going to be facing cases where *any* decision is better than *no*
decision, or where the *perfect* will be the enemy of the *good*.

In practical terms, the group should think twice before opening
already-made decisions and open them only for very good reasons. Also,
the group is going to have to make decisions based on *rough* consensus,
as opposed to *wide* consensus or unanimity. This may sound like
motherhood and apple pie but I want to stress these points anyway since
they are important and need to be kept in mind.

For Orlando, I have allocated a *significant* amount of time to RTCWeb
and MMUSIC. Those sessions will allow us to take advantage of the
momentum we currently have after the interim and to make more progress
in all the relevant specifications.

Cheers,

Gonzalo
AD for the RTCWeb and MMUSIC WGs

---

From: "Roni Even" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:22:09 +0200

Hi Gonzalo,
Is there a meeting summary from the interim meeting that list the
already-made decisions from the interim or are you talking about ones from
IETF85?
Thanks
Roni Even

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Gonzalo Camarillo
Sent: 12 February, 2013 1:45 PM
To: [email-masked]; mmusic
Subject: [rtcweb] Interim meeting and way forward

Folks,

first of all, I hope everybody has already managed to get back home after
the storm. Also, I want to thank Hadriel and Acme for being great hosts. The
information flow, the meeting facilities, the catering, the pullovers, and
everything else was just perfect.

With respect to the technical work that got done in Boston and, more
importantly, that remains to be done, I want to share a few thoughts with
the group.

A fact that is obvious but some of us sometimes forget about is that RTCWeb,
as any other technology, has a window of opportunity. The usefulness and
relevance of any standards we develop in this area will be extremely high
within that window, but will decrease dramatically if the window closes
(e.g., if too many new applications out there are based on non-standard
mechanisms).

While we have everything in the group to meet the relevant market's
deadlines, we should keep them in mind nevertheless. In particular, we are
going to be facing cases where *any* decision is better than *no* decision,
or where the *perfect* will be the enemy of the *good*.

In practical terms, the group should think twice before opening already-made
decisions and open them only for very good reasons. Also, the group is going
to have to make decisions based on *rough* consensus, as opposed to *wide*
consensus or unanimity. This may sound like motherhood and apple pie but I
want to stress these points anyway since they are important and need to be
kept in mind.

For Orlando, I have allocated a *significant* amount of time to RTCWeb and
MMUSIC. Those sessions will allow us to take advantage of the momentum we
currently have after the interim and to make more progress in all the
relevant specifications.

Cheers,

Gonzalo

_______________________________________________
rtcweb mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rtcweb

---

From: Gonzalo Camarillo <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 17:00:16 +0200

Hi Roni,

at this point, I am talking in general and strategically, not about any
decision in particular. Which particular topics would benefit from the
suggestions below and which wouldn't should be kind-of obvious to anyone
who is somewhat involved in the technical work. Also, as usual, the
technical discussions on individual topics will be moderated and
facilitated by the chairs.

Thanks,

Gonzalo

---

From: Bernard Aboba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:27:19 -0800

Good thoughts, Gonzalo.  I share your concern about the rate of progress.  However, I do not believe that the solution is to allocate more time.  If that were true then we would all be feeling a lot better after three days of work at the interim.  IMHO, there is no amount of effort that can produce movement on this set of problems without getting better clarity on the context of the discussions and the process by which we get to consensus.  

One observation from the interim (and other previous meetings) is that there is not a consistent understanding of the *context* for making decisions, and what the definition of "consensus" is.  IMHO, there is a world of difference between asking for consensus on the solution to a set of problems in the context of RTCWEB, versus setting the context to be within the scope of MMUSIC {e.g. applicable to RTCWEB, CLUE and possible other WGs too}.   If the context is RTCWEB, we have a use case document to help us understand the requirements the WebRTC protocols and APIs;  if it is MMUSIC, then the set of requirements is not obvious (at least by me) and we should not be surprised if the group cannot come to consensus. 

With respect to understanding of the nature of "consensus" in the IETF, Pete Resnick has recently published an I-D which is well worth reading: 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-resnick-on-consensus

> Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:45:04 +0200
> From: [email-masked]
> To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]