RE: Generalized Signaling documents

[Debanjan Saha <DSaha@tellium.com>]

Vishal,


Echoing on what you said, the following is quoted from
http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html, the policy
document people keep referring to. 

Two reasons for avoiding long lists are mentioned. 
The first one is a formatting issue and does not 
apply to the GMPLS signaling draft. Formatting looks 
fine to me. In any case, it seems pretty frivolous.

The second reason also does not apply to this draft
since there are more authors than companies listed.
Clearly authors were not added for corporate name
dropping. This policy also seems very arbitrary and
goes much beyond editorial responsibility.

Just curious, who comes up with these policies?

"Objections to huge author lists are both practical and 
ideological. The practical issues have to do with the 
long-existing RFC formatting conventions that do not 
comfortably handle large author lists." 

"Ideological objections stem from the Internet community's 
tradition of individual rather than corporate action and 
responsibility. Some might see a list of 17 authors on one 
RFC as motivated by a desire for corporate name-dropping, 
which would be inappropriate in the IETF/RFC context. If 
there is a desire to demonstrate how many companies are 
interested in this spec, a simple acknowledgment section 
can accomplish the same thing, without Author Overload."

Debanjan

-----Original Message-----
From: Vishal Sharma [mailto:v.sharma@ieee.org]
Sent: Monday, March 25, 2002 5:16 PM
To: Eric Gray; Randy Bush
Cc: Yakov Rekhter; Wijnen, Bert (Bert); ccamp-wg
Subject: RE: Generalized Signaling documents


Eric,

Thanks for your comments.

I think while general guidelines are good, it is necessary to
also consider the nature and scope of work done on 
individual work items of a WG's charter.

In each effort, there is a core group of people who take on
the mantle of initiating ideas (often being the ones making
the initial proposals) and progressing them through
the development and documentation process on their way to
becoming RFCs.  That core group, which is typically small, 
sometimes may be a little larger given the specific subject 
at hand.

In the case of the GMPLS signaling documents that core group
has remained pretty consistent right from the initial days of
this work (starting shortly before the Adelaide IETF in March
2000). Also, this core group is not unreasonably large.
As someone already mentioned, GMPLS is a complex subject, requiring 
expertise from several areas, which is what the core group has 
brought to the document.

Of course, many other people have contributed to shaping the
document with comments, ideas, and suggestions and they should
be acknowledged in the acknowledgement section of the document.

There were also a couple of emails that pointed out that the
signaling documents do not go against any of the RFC Editor's
guidelines, as currently laid out. Formatting is not a problem
(the document is very reasonably formatted), and certainly there
is no intent of name dropping for companies (the list has remained
fairly stable for quite a while, and represents the _individuals_
who contributed to the work). If the intent was to name drop, the
list would have looked a lot different, with many more names
perhaps.

So, in this instance, I do not see any justification for
arbitrarily coming down on the authors, especially after practically
all of the work has been done.

Given some other RFC examples that people have pointed to, and
the inter-disciplinary nature of the GMPLS work, I cannot see
a problem keeping the documents just as they are (and have been
for the better part of a year).

-Vishal

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ccamp@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-ccamp@ops.ietf.org]On
> Behalf Of Eric Gray
> Sent: Monday, March 25, 2002 4:02 PM
> To: Randy Bush
> Cc: Yakov Rekhter; Wijnen, Bert (Bert); ccamp-wg
> Subject: Re: Generalized Signaling documents
> 
> 
> Randy,
> 
>     I see the presentation on manners really took hold.
> 
>     You don't want to be so terse that the content of your
> many replies nears zero - considering each reply on its
> own - and I'm not sure that being so terse is consistent
> with the goal of getting back to work.
> 
>     As I understand it, the guidelines from the RFC editor
> are that people who made substantial contributions to the
> work are 'authors' and should be listed as such.  From there,
> the progression might reasonably be to list a small set of
> people (typically one) as the editor and acknowledge each
> of the contributing authors in an appropriate section.
> 
>     If authors intend to indicate widespread support for the
> ideas of an intended RFC, maybe it makes sense to add a
> section - or paragraph - that spells this out.
> 
>     The intention - IMHO - is that the list of authors should
> be consistent with the actual work and this implies some
> guidelines of 'reasonableness'.  Any such guidelines would
> naturally need to be flexible as such things tend to evolve.
> 
>     The RFC editor needs to put a stake in the ground in order
> to maintain credibility for the RFC publishing process.  The
> people contributing to the RFC process need to be sensitive
> to this if they would like to have this process continue to be
> as respected as it currently is.
> 
> You wrote:
> 
> >>>but it will be so now.  no exact number, but no longs lists.
> >>>
> >>Does that represent your own position, or the position of the
> >>IESG as the whole ?
> >>
> >
> >the iesg, the rfc editor, the teacher, and my mommy.  more details
> >forthcoming.
> >
> >can we get to work now?
> >
> >randy
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> --
> Eric Gray (mailto:eric.gray@sandburst.com)
> http://www.mindspring.com/~ewgray
> 
> 
>