[AFS3-std] Status of protocol drafts?

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

--On Thursday, November 05, 2009 11:27:25 AM +0000 Simon Wilkinson 
<simon@sxw.org.uk> wrote:

> The first is that there has been no movement since last year on
> establishing a clearer footing for the work done on this list. The draft
> I published suggests that the g.c.o registrars bootstrap the process, but
> so far they haven't had sufficient time to do so. At some point, if they
> remain unable to get it off the ground, we're going to have to come up
> with another mechanism.

There's actually been some movement, in that we've added some registrars. 
Tom Kula joined the registrars in June, and since then we've had a 
volunteer to represent Arla.  The transition of the registries themselves 
will be an ongoing process, probably handled on a registry-by-registry 
basis as we handled requests.  However, none of that should prevent us from 
running an election.

What does prevent us from running an election is that we haven't yet 
formally demonstrated consensus on the process document.  To that end, I 
will shortly (within the next week or so) issue a consensus call on this 
list, probably including copies to other relevant mailing lists, and with a 
deadline to be determined.  At the end of that period, if the registrars 
believe there is indeed a consensus, then we will begin the bootstrap 
process as described in the document.



> There is also a general issue about how to publish the wider set of AFS
> protocol documents - the current proposal is that they go through the
> independent submission stream, and eventually appear as RFCs. To date, I
> don't think we've approached anyone with regards to this plan, and the
> whole RFC publishing processing is going through significant change at
> present.

At this point, most of the questions about what the process will look like 
have been resolved.  The new structure is described in RFC5620, and the 
contract for the RFC Production Center and RFC Publisher roles was awarded 
to Association Management Solutions LLC, the same entity which operates the 
Internet-Drafts repository and maintains other infrastructure and provides 
meeting planning services for the IETF.  They have recruited two members of 
the RFC-Editor staff at ISI to act in senior roles, assuring the continuity 
of the process of preparing and publishing RFC's.

At present the IAB has not yet selected an Independent Stream Editor, but 
from what I can tell, that process appears to be proceeding smoothly. 
Before we begin publishing AFS-related documents via the independent 
stream, we probably want to wait for the appointment of an ISE and have a 
conversation with that individual.



> We need to resolve this before things like extended callbacks
> can move forwards.

We need to resolve this before things like extended callbacks can be 
published in final form.  In no way should lack of resolution on the RFC 
publication question hinder us from developing, discussing, and refining a 
proposal, eventually reaching a consensus, and beginning implementationi.


-- Jeff