Dave, > The fact that you had to reach back 2.5 years, to a frankly rather obscure > document that came from the IAB and not the broader IETF, demonstrates my > point that we lacked meaningful context
You asked for context and I provided a context. We can certainly debate how meaningful it is. There are obvious arguments that we can make against its meaningfulness. But I disagree with your characterisation of the most recent RFC (6020) on topic from the organisation that in the IETF ecosystem has IANA oversight in its charter (per RFC 2580, a BCP) as "obscure". In any case I don't want to argue too much, because I _do_ agree with your larger points: > They don't set work agendas. They don't control overall budgets. They don't > hire and fire people. For almost all of the formal IETF 'decisions' they > participate in, it is with exactly one vote in a group, and not more > authority than that. ... > IETF leaders are best viewed as facilitators, rather than leaders. They do > huge amounts of organizing, coordinating, interfacing, in the classic style > of the cliche'd 'shepherding cats'. Although I would claim that while there is no traditional "leading" at the IETF, I do think that IETF facilitators do occasionally lead in the sense of suggesting paths forward, identifying potential challenges, etc. And I of course would love to have this: > We need to find some sort of language that gives constructive guidance and > constraint about public representations of the IETF, by our 'leaders'. Jari
