Session Date/Time: 22 Jul 2026 09:30
[00:00:17] Shu Ping: Hello. It's time, so we should start. Okay. So welcome to the gen dispatch session. And the p please be aware that this session is being recorded. I'm the one of the co chair, Shu Ping, and my co chair, Martin, is online. Okay. First, Northwell. I suppose there will be no newcomers, but still have you go through this. And if especially if you are a newcomer to IETF, you have to read this very carefully, and you have to follow the certain processes and policies in when you are attending IETF, and there are some guidelines for you to refer to. And if you have any questions and thoughts, please feel free to reach our ADs and and the chairs, and we would like to help you. And some meeting tips. And if you so please join the queue and use Meetecho Lite. And for the remote participant, because this time we got two remote presenters, And please make sure your audio video are off, and nice you are presenting. And please use your headset. And we so during these and we also often have this awful audios, especially here in the meeting room. And please state your name and when you join the queue. And some resources for this meeting. And here is our agenda for this meeting. And we have got two presentations. So any agenda bashing? So any
[00:02:34] Pete Resnick: No? Can can we put up a Yeah. This is Pete Resnick. So, Mark and I posted a draft last night, this morning, somewhere in the middle, that we would love to have on if there is time for it. It is not done. We just wanna get an it's not even barely begun, but we wanna get an idea if it's something that GenDispatch would be willing to look at. Do we think we have time to?
[00:03:11] Shu Ping: Yep. Let's see. Yeah.
[00:03:13] Pete Resnick: Five minutes at most.
[00:03:14] Shu Ping: Okay.
[00:03:15] Pete Resnick: Thank you.
[00:03:15] Shu Ping: Noted. K. And, Martin? Roman?
[00:03:25] Martin Vigneri: Roman wants to speak. Yeah. Okay. Go on, Roman.
[00:03:29] Roman Danyliw: Yeah. I just wanted a procedure clarity on what we were just thinking about here. So it's not my understanding of dispatch that you could bring a draft to give people a taste, but you don't run the dispatch process. If you have a draft that you want run through the process, you come. Otherwise, it's more like HotRFC, and this opens, frankly, the attack surface that now we would bring drafts to just give it a taste, but not the dispatch. And this, I think, will create some complexity.
[00:03:54] Pete Resnick: No. I I think we are happy to have it dispatched, and maybe part of that dispatch is you're not ready yet to go anywhere, or maybe it's go away, or maybe it's, oh, we should have a working group to talk exactly about that. We are fine with that result.
[00:04:12] Roman Danyliw: And and so we would then be comfortable applying the usual rule we dispatch once and we with a cognizance that most people have not read this draft before because one dropped as well. I I think setting it up with because it got dropped sometime in the middle of the night might be morning. Okay. Fair enough.
[00:04:35] Shu Ping: Eric? No? Okay.
[00:04:38] Eric Rescorla: Well, I I I guess I'm just not that jazzed at making decisions on a draft which appeared twenty four hours ago. That seems like like bad mojo in every dimension. Like
[00:04:50] Mark Nottingham: Yeah. I I I think if if we're going to be that strict about it and and and process oriented, then my preference would be to wait and give people a chance to read and and discuss the draft. I'm I'm a little surprised that we need to be so strict, but sure.
[00:05:06] Shu Ping: Okay. Martin, you want to say something?
[00:05:09] Martin Vigneri: Yes. Thank you, Shuping. Before we start, just wanted to say a few words. Discussion on the mailing list last week derailed quite a bit at least on one occasion, and that's not acceptable. And we wanted to be very clear about that and say a few words on that specific point during the meeting or at least benefit from that airtime to say that. So let's so we'll make sure that it doesn't open again. And since we're gonna discuss the draft that led to that event, I also want to remind everyone that we are expected to answer the dispatch questions rather than discuss the details of the different drafts at length. So it's okay to come up with clarification questions, but we're not discussing the content. Thank you very much.
[00:06:14] Shu Ping: Okay. Thank you, Martin. And now we go to the first presentation. Brian, you want the control?
[00:06:27] Brian Carpenter: No. It's okay. It's only a few slides, so you might as well keep control. So I'll try to be quick. This is a draft that's been around for month or two, but started by Rob and I joined on. If you go straight to the second slide, please. So we used a a piece of terminology which is new and which Roman actually wants us to get rid of, but that doesn't change the substance of what we're saying. So I'll I'll continue to use the terminology that's in the current draft. IETF correspondence means all the stuff you do that isn't an IETF document or an IETF Internet draft. So email, other public fora, appeals, minutes, or recordings, such as the recording that's being made right now in this session. So we've all noticed, I think, that sometimes people attempt to attach legal restrictions to such correspondence, in particular the statement that no derivative works are allowed. And our observation is that inhibits normal discussion. And the second observation is that there is a little bit of a weakness in the wording of the relevant BCP, which is RFC five three seven eight, that if you read it the right way, allows a loophole that you could put a derivative works restriction on any old email sent to the IGF. Next slide, please. So the proposed solution is simply to update RFC 5,378. The way it's phrased in the current draft is that ITF correspondence must not include restrictions on derivative works, and a statement which shouldn't actually have a must admit, but the statement that participants can ignore such things anyway. Of course, this touches on legal issues, so whatever wording we would finally end up with needs review by counsel. And Roman's suggestion was to sort of invert the logic and rely on the definition of IATF documents and IATF Internet drafts, which is already in RFC 5,378, and say that only those documents could carry restrictions on derivative works. But that's a wording issue. It isn't a change of principle to what we're proposing. So that basically is all the document says, or it puts some nice words around it. Next slide, please. So there are two questions or three questions. Do we want to fix this? If not, well, we'll just go away. Is discussion needed, for example, on the IPR working group list, which is still around, although there is no IPR working group? That is the working group that originally produced RFC 5378. Or could it go direct to AD sponsorship since spinning up a working group for this would be a significant amount of overhead? So I think those cover the dispatch questions, and that's really all I've got to say.
[00:10:05] Shu Ping: Okay. Thank you, Ryan. And please remember, this is dispatch session, and please only focus on answering those dispatch question. And please do not discuss about the draft itself, and we have a lot of discussions already in the mailing list. Okay, please. And Mark? Mark Nottingham.
[00:10:33] Mark Nottingham: Yeah. Mark Nottingham. I I I for the dispatch question, I don't think this should be progressed anywhere until it has review from counsel. This is, you know, technical people trying to make legal instruments. It it's claiming that the the the disclaimer has certain effects. I'm not at all convinced that it does. And furthermore, the ability to remove the disclaimer has some interesting side effects that we might not anticipate. For example, people going and taking the recordings and making derivative works that change the meaning or or or put them in a new light. So I just I I don't think we should be dabbling here with without counsel.
[00:11:17] Shu Ping: Okay. Drum?
[00:11:22] John Levine: Well, I'm kinda wasting my time since Mark said most of what I was gonna say. But yeah. But I think the the issue is that the no the no the no derivatives notes are basically a legal threat. You know? And we cannot tell people to ignore legal threats unless we're willing to indemnify them, which is a which is a a swap that we're not gonna step step into. So I'm agreeing with him that we need to ask our our our counsel to opine on whether whether this or anything like this is is practical before before doing anything else with it.
[00:11:56] Brian Carpenter: You know, I can interject. The draft says that.
[00:12:02] John Levine: Sorry. It says it says what?
[00:12:03] Brian Carpenter: The draft says it needs a legal review, of course. It's obvious. Well I agree. I don't think that answers the first dispatch question, though, which is whether we want to fix this.
[00:12:20] Shu Ping: Andrew?
[00:12:22] Andrew Campling: Hi. Yeah. Andrew Camping. I agree with the previous point. So on the assumption, it's cleared by council. In my view, we should fix this to remove the ambiguity, but only with the proviso that if it is fixed, that we apply it evenly and rigorously and don't set it aside when certain, you know, significant figures, you know, ignore the rules and do their own thing, which happens often.
[00:12:52] Chairperson: John, I think we should fix this. I think it should be dispatched to legal counsel. And then I think that's the main discussion, then it should probably be announced on this mailing list. I think the moderation part of this also need discussion. It's quite ridiculous that someone gets moderated once per month and then come back and, like, misbehaves and get moderated again.
[00:13:16] Shu Ping: K. Warren?
[00:13:17] Warren Kumari: Warren Kamari, Google. Yes. I think we wanna fix this. I don't think much discussion is needed. I think AD sponsorship is fine, but all of that is gated on the, you know, legal counsels like, yep. This seems fine, which I think is what most people have said.
[00:13:31] Shu Ping: Okay. David.
[00:13:33] David Schinazi: David Schinazi, plus one legal counsel, two eighty sponsorship.
[00:13:38] Shu Ping: Okay. Rich?
[00:13:43] Rich Salz: I think if yeah. We probably wanna fix this, maybe expand the scope to include other disclaimers that, you know, certain enterprises put on their email. It say things like, this is only intended for the recipient, all thousand people on the IETF list. Maybe we should just put that kind of thing in general. Yeah. Obviously, it should get reviewed by counsel before it moves anywhere else. And AD sponsorship are totally against that because this has gotta be an IETF policy and have IETF consensus.
[00:14:15] Shu Ping: Okay. Thank you.
[00:14:16] Brian Carpenter: Excuse me. Eric? AD sponsorship doesn't prevent IETF consensus.
[00:14:22] Rich Salz: Yeah. Oh, but it's different. You know, a smaller working group who cares about this thing and an existing working group is fine is one that comes to mind. But, no, it it's gotta go through. It doesn't go through the whole IETF process, then some people will look at it as being a short circuit. And I think that's a big bad mistake.
[00:14:46] Shu Ping: Eric?
[00:14:47] Eric Rescorla: So for for the record, AD sponsorship, in fact, requires the IETF consensus now, not just does not exclude it. Though I actually have sensitivity for this position. I just wanna clarify I just wanna clarify that they're they do need a consensus call. So it it seems to me that, like, there are actually two issues that are getting a little intermixed here. One issue is the, a bill is is that we have an explicit carve out for, excluding your things you send or input to the ITF from the from the ordinary contribution grants. And then there's the question of, like, people shoving stuff in their email first. And I'm not sure those are the same problem, and I'm not sure and this is can end modeling them a bit. I really be much more sympathetic for simply excluding simply removing the ability for people to make those to make those disclaimers entirely and then say nothing about whether they attached various email footers to things or not. Because it seems to me that's just a red herring entirely as as Rich says. Like like, we get constant messages that have all kinds of crazy stuff in the footers. But the I think the the the the more relevant point would be and and this would require much less counsel work. But you simply say that that there's no exclusion left. They're not possible not allowed to exclude this at all.
[00:16:00] Shu Ping: Okay. Jay?
[00:16:05] Jay Daly: Thank you. Jay Daly, ITF Executive Director. So, three things. First of all, I don't want to be in a position where we have somebody publishes a random draft and people on mailing lists say this needs legal review and there's any obligation on me. So having a dispatch outcome that says this needs legal review is great, you know, because that then gives me the reason you know, the bar for when something gets legal review. Otherwise, I'll get, like, 500 requests for legal review. K? The second thing is we have already had the lawyers review fifty three seventy eight and the other documents as well in order to provide the legal advice to the IESG for their statement. And there is no issue about the interpretation of the current text around derivatives. And they the current you know, the misuse of it is clearly misused. There's no ambiguity about that as far as our lawyers are concerned. So the any legal advice that I am going to be getting is more about what is being proposed here and the changes rather than the current position because the current position is clear and that's what the ISG have gone forward on. And the third thing is, and this is perhaps broadening it, some of the feedback I've heard directly is why do we have the derivatives, no derivatives clause anyway? And it's potentially worth considering if you're going to open up derivatives whether or not you should be talking about that the whole concept of that clause.
[00:17:41] Shu Ping: Thank you. Mark Nottingham, you put yourself.
[00:17:46] Mark Nottingham: Yeah. Mark Nottingham. Jay, your point is well taken. Having that gate is is a useful thing. I think what what what's maybe tweaking me a little bit is, people keep on saying legal review. I'm not sure the problem is well described. I think I'd much rather have the community describe what we perceive the problem as, have the lawyers take a look at that and confirm that it is a problem, and then suggest resolutions, if that makes sense.
[00:18:15] Shu Ping: Okay. Stefan?
[00:18:20] Stefan Wenger: Yeah. Good morning, Stefan Wenger. I would suggest to split this draft into two. One, the let's call it anti troll part and that should be fast tracked with AD sponsorship. The other that relates to the more general nuisance of corporate junk that's attached to emails which is much harder problem to tackle for pragmatic reasons. And that should be tackled slowly that people can adjust to it. I don't know whether we spin up a working group, I don't care, but not fast track. Thank you.
[00:19:06] Shu Ping: Thank you. Martin?
[00:19:08] Martin Thompson: Yeah. Martin Thompson. I think I might disagree with Mark here. I think we know what we want. And I think it's from maybe maybe there's some details that we disagree on. I think we probably do need to spend a little bit of time in this working group before or or somewhere before we send something to a lawyer to review. But I think that the rough area that we are targeting here is if someone tries to restrict the rights of other participants to create derivative works for the purposes of correspondence, then that may be something that we want to explicitly disallow. I I think the way that this draft currently frames it is not quite right. I made some suggestions in the in the chat. I think Edgar's suggestion is is the right one. And, again, I think I probably disagree with with Stefan there. I think if you do it right, then you you kill off all of the at least the derivative works aspects of the the corporate footers and whatnot. You maybe don't don't deal with all of the implications of those. And Mark's gonna come and disagree with me again.
[00:20:13] Shu Ping: Hannah, just yeah. One question. So if we we need to do more work, where should we conduct the work? In this gen dispatch meeting list or somewhere else?
[00:20:26] Martin Thompson: Well, my suggestion there is that this session has provided some pretty actionable feedback for the authors, and I I think it might be worth them going back and thinking a little bit about that and presenting another draft next time. I don't think we need to be especially rushed on this one. To Jay's point, we have a workable situation right now, and the ISG is in the clear, so we're
[00:20:48] Eric Rescorla: good. K.
[00:20:53] Shu Ping: Lars?
[00:20:54] Lars Eggert: Lars, I got Mozilla. So specifically on the corporate junk footer bit, I didn't really recall us having is it an ISG statement or something else that says as a recipient of one of these, you can just ignore it, and maybe we just need to say that again. I also like, think it was Scott Bradner on the list who said, you know, you know, it's it's a pointless fight. You're never gonna win it because some IT admin will need to slap this on because lawyers tell him to, and nothing that an ITF participant can do will, you know, prevent that that footer from being there. So I think the best we can do is to maybe more continuously remind participants that these footers, the the junk corporate footers don't mean anything and and leave it at that.
[00:21:35] Shu Ping: Okay. Thank you. So no more question comments? Okay. So for the dispatch outcome, and we heard that we should fix this. Right? So that is the consensus. And the legal review is also needed. But before we do that, we need more work here. Right? So there are already discussions in the mailing list. And so, Brian, you could take take that. And so we need more work, and then we will send to the legal counsel for the review. Absolutely.
[00:22:25] Brian Carpenter: So you would really surely, you would prefer the discussion not to be on gen dispatch, wouldn't you? I mean, I don't care. I'll I can discuss on any list you want, but I was suggesting ipr-wg because that was actually set up for this sort of topic.
[00:22:42] Roman Danyliw: I think that is a brilliant idea, Brian. We should absolutely move it to that mailing list. I did not jump in queue, but let's move the topic to the topic specific mailing list, I p r dash w g.
[00:22:53] Shu Ping: Okay. Okay. Cool. Thank you, Oman. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Let's move to the next one. Mallory?
[00:23:13] Mallory Knodel: Hey. Good morning, everybody. So I did circulate this on the list a couple weeks ago. This will look familiar to folks, but it has a different title, and it does a couple of different things. Since I'll just say that since the last time this was dispatched, I I don't actually think that the dispatch outcome ran its course. I think we were meant to have a separate mailing list and discussion about this. So that's one thing. And then the other thing, because originally, this was just about composition of the Nomcom, there have been not one, not two, but somebody told me the other day, three since this draft was introduced that have been all men. So just wanted to put that in perspective. I don't think I have control of the slides. So if you could
[00:24:07] Warren Kumari: just go to the next one, please. Thank you.
[00:24:13] Mallory Knodel: So now so so previously, this was about the composition, extending the representation by organization limit that's in RFC eighty seven thirteen so that not all voting members on the NOMCOM belong to the same gender. Now it includes a piece on comportment, which is a three part suggestion to bring some more rigor and fairness if we treat the NOMCOM like a hiring committee. And these are based on best practice for any hiring committee that worries about diversity or cares cares cares about diversity. So those things are on the next on the next slide. But just to say upfront, like, there are then there are now two goals. So it used to be just there are no single gender NOMCOMs. It's very narrow, very incisive change. Now I'm adding a second goal, which is that the, NOMCOM conducts itself. Like, it's a hiring committee with the rigor and fairness expected of any kind of body of that kind. Next slide, please. So here are the changes. Obviously, we had different versions previously. So this is now the, I guess, the o three. Changes previously were introduced after this draft was circulated the first time a few years ago. So, obviously, the retitle has happened. The composition section changed a bit just because I felt like there was some good text in section 4.17 in the original eighty seven thirteen. And then the major changes are from the last four bullet points on this slide. Sorry. The next three bullet points on this slide that there's a new comportment section Talks about it being a hiring committee. I used some ideas from the ICANN, noncom code of conduct on conflict of interest, structured interview. And, anyway, there's three the three remedies on the next slide. And then the last thing is then, of course, there's a privacy consideration section already, which was one of the main points of discussion the last time we talked about this. And it now includes a piece on the conflict of interest piece. So next slide, please. Finally, we get to the comportment part that I keep remembering. Okay. So, again, like, not so, yeah, the introduction has changed because now it has two parts to it. The composition is relatively static over the last time. And if you remember the remedy, it's just it it's the two per organization limit. It just does the same thing, but for for gender. And then this comportment section, again, it sort of extends stuff that's already in RFC eighty seven thirteen, but it just tries to formalize it a bit more directly. It also eighty seven thirteen didn't have anything on nondiscrimination and personal conflicts of interest. There's organizational conflicts of interest and then the standardized evaluation. So these do sort of extend as well that that part of eighty seven thirteen. Then the so, yeah, that that would that's the suggest remedy. It's just to include those additional pieces. Next slide, please. Let this is just about the privacy considerations because it was a really important part of the discussion the last time we talked about this draft. I just wanted to belabor that a bit to, allay concerns. I also have a suggestion for maybe changing this in retrospect after publishing the latest draft, but nonetheless so this is essentially the outline of the privacy considerations, section. We are not asking people to mandatory disclose gender. The way it's worded currently in eighty seven thirteen section actually, it's actually appendix c oral tradition. It says things like the rather than defining precise rules for how to define affiliation, the IETF community depends on the honor and integrity of the participants to make the process work. I think that's the vibe we're going for with gender as well, but it's one of those things where you can also just ask if there's lack of clarity. The we're not trying to document this, which is why there's this text and privacy considerations. And, of course, then the addition to this section is very important. Any personal, again, conflict of interest disclosures are also sensitive. That's not something that would be published. It would be kept under the privacy requirements of the sections 3.6 and section nine in, RFC eighty seven thirteen. So it would only be disclosed to the chair. Right? So the way conflict of interest typically works is if you have an interest of any kind, you sort of need to, disclose that to the, person responsible. And then that person, maybe with input sometimes in cases where it's quite legal, though I doubt this would be, they determine whether or not they see a conflict. And then that just means recusal from those particular interviews typically. So we already have conflict of interest, but it's seen as professional. And I think we're extending this to personal. Again, just following best practice in trying to make hiring hiring decisions, appointments more diverse and inclusive. So that is my final slide. I'm sorry I didn't have a dispatch slide, but I think the question is obvious. You know, should this get dispatched? Is this something folks would like to talk about? I'm gonna have to catch up in the chat. Sorry. I see there are some things related to this, and I was presenting so I couldn't read them. But I'm doing that now.
[00:31:00] Martin Thompson: Okay.
[00:31:05] Shu Ping: So shall we go for the comments now? Or you want
[00:31:08] Mallory Knodel: I yes. I think that's fine.
[00:31:10] Shu Ping: Okay. So, Marjorie, this this was dispatched before? Or this this is the first time?
[00:31:18] Mallory Knodel: It was a different version of the draft has changed significantly. And
[00:31:24] Shu Ping: Okay.
[00:31:25] Mallory Knodel: Yes. It was you were all in Australia, I believe, whatever that was. Sorry. I've lost my timing.
[00:31:34] Shu Ping: Okay. So for the dispatch question only, please, Marty.
[00:31:40] Martin Thompson: Yeah. Martin Thompson. I'm still in Australia spiritually. Yeah. Yeah. Stop there, Mark. So oh, wow. Interesting. Transcriptions. Fantastic. So I think the dispatch that we may have stood The microphone's fading in and out. Thank you. And so, I'm sorry to say, I think the draft has regressed, in a sense. I think some of the framing is particularly problematic. But I was supportive then of the notion of having the sort of one person of the non dominant gender as part of the NOMCOM. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. I think some of these other things are actually contrary to the design of the system itself, and so are unnecessary. So for instance, this conflict of interest thing is something that noncoms have managed. But generally speaking, the system is set up with the random selection such that those sorts of things are not necessary. And so I would say that the entire new conduct section you've added makes the document far less acceptable than the previous version.
[00:33:14] Mallory Knodel: Okay. That's helpful feedback. Yeah. I mean, the look. The intention was just to feel like, you know, maybe it wasn't clear. Like, maybe the context for the original suggestion wasn't clear enough that, you know, why the noncom? Like, why are we worried about this? There's a lot of, you know, what about that? What about this? What about that? And I I totally take all of that on board. I do think we could do so much more, and I just wanted to reframe the reason why the NOMCOM is so important and maybe different from other kinds of places where diversity happens is that it's kind of like ground zero for a lot of these things. Right? A lot of best practice out there on, diversity tells us that, it it often starts with hiring. It often starts with the people who are the barriers between those coming into an organization and then, you know, those on the inside. Right? And so, if we start with the NOMCOM and we think of it as a hiring committee, then I think there's more that can be done besides just making sure that the hiring committee itself is diverse. Like, it can also follow some best practice around, you know, conducting itself as if it's a hiring committee and committed to diversity. So that was just the thinking around that, but I really appreciate your feedback, Martin. Thank you.
[00:34:37] Shu Ping: Okay. Mark?
[00:34:38] Mark Nottingham: Mark Nottingham. Yeah. Mallory, I I agree with you about the importance of the noncom. I'm always a little uncomfortable that, you know, we're gonna come across a noncom that doesn't do a great job. It seems miraculous that we always seem to have reasonable outcomes, and, you know, I'm just waiting for the one that isn't. So I I I agree with your focus here. I'm I'm I'm kinda conflicted about this draft. And the one thing that really stood out to me was that I I absolutely agree. While pronouns can be a strong indicator of gender, best practice is to ask absolutely. Makes total sense. Disclosure, should remain voluntary and nonpublic. Absolutely agree. That's entirely the right thing to do. But this is within a process that is otherwise radically transparent. You know? Everyone can go and run an algorithm and figure out whether we got the right NOMCOM, you know, by the algorithm that we've documented in the RFC. And so this has you know, this is the one thing that we don't document as an input to that algorithm, and so that's a conflict. And I I don't know how to resolve that. So I I don't know if you have any thoughts about that, but that that was the one thing that really stood stood out to me.
[00:35:51] Mallory Knodel: I would I would say and this is maybe a general comment, and I'm not you know, I'm I'm really not trying to be cheeky or anything, but that if we want to change the gender composition radically, and I think radically is probably an appropriate word because it is radically not diverse, we actually have to change things. I we do I mean, if we want change, we have to be comfortable with change. And I know that there are certain ways that things have happened. I think it's worth, maybe not in this moment, to question some of those choices that have been made in the past. But I think it is important to maybe feel as if there are things we can change. There are things that are movable or things that we can look at in a different light. Like, maybe that radical transparency does have some bounds to it. It is not, you know, extremely radically transparent because there needs to be a balance with sort of other values that we have. So if if, you know, this radical transparency you're talking about does somehow impede work that would otherwise make something more diverse, like, maybe that's a reasonable trade off to
[00:37:06] Brian Carpenter: make. Anyway.
[00:37:09] Mark Nottingham: Yeah. Just just to briefly respond, I I think that's a reasonable answer. I think, you know, maybe we could think about things like having selective disclosure to, I don't know, the LLC board or or somebody just to, you know, verify that nobody's gaming the system.
[00:37:23] Eric Rescorla: Yeah.
[00:37:23] Mark Nottingham: Yeah. So
[00:37:25] Mallory Knodel: We could add that. We could totally add that.
[00:37:27] Mark Nottingham: I think that that's a reasonable answer. And I I I do think that that this deserves more consideration because, you know, I first thing I did when I saw your draft was go back and look at previous Nomcoms. I'm like, oh, look. There's one with representation. Good. There's one. Oh, look. There's one without. There's one without. There's one without.
[00:37:43] Roman Danyliw: So
[00:37:43] Mallory Knodel: Three. I thought it was two. And then somebody I was talking to was like, oh, no, Mallory. You're totally wrong. It's 3. And I
[00:37:50] Shu Ping: Where shall we dispatch it?
[00:37:57] Mark Nottingham: I don't have strong feelings about that, but I do think continuing to discuss it in some fashion is is reasonable.
[00:38:02] Shu Ping: Okay. Thank you. Carolina.
[00:38:08] Carolina Caeiro: Yeah. I'm next in the queue. Hi, Mallory. This is Carolina. Thank you for working on this. I just wanted to say I'm speaking in my personal capacity, just for clarity, not as co chair of Sisters. I just, yeah, wanted to stand up to the mic that to say that I support this work being conducted in IETF. I'm
[00:38:29] Shu Ping: a lit
[00:38:29] Carolina Caeiro: a little less clear as to where it should be honed, And I know we're discussing dispatch here. So I wanted to ask, Mallory, whether you have any ideas of where you'd like this work to go. But I think this you know, personally, you know, again, seeing the composition of the 2024 Nomcom sort of reinforces to me that this is something that needs to be worked on. I don't think a change of this nature would impact the quality of the work being done by the NOCOM. Yeah. I don't think it precludes us from us working on other initiatives, such as working really hard to have more gender diversity in the pool of volunteers. So I think we're not looking for a silver bullet here, but we need to be working, you know, as a community on this. I fully support it, 100% to go forward. A bit less clear as to where it needs to be dispatched. So I'd like, Malorie to guide us on that.
[00:39:38] Mallory Knodel: Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for turning the question back. I mean no. And I appreciate your support a lot. I think it was it's it is really humble in the the original draft was, like, I don't know, two pages. It's a very humble suggestion. I think it it is small, and it and it shouldn't, You know, we should just do something. And I think we can obviously iterate over time. Right? It doesn't doing this, like you said, doesn't prevent us from doing other things. So just maybe a reflection on the last time. Like, we were supposed to have a sort of separate space, like, a list, I think, to talk about this. I'm not sure that should be the outcome because that just we have evidence that that didn't bear fruit. I also think we have evidence that we need something is need needs to be done. Like, I'm disappointed we had three noncoms that were no women, but, it's just more evidence to support the need for this. So we kind of know what not to do, but I don't know also what to do. It'd be great if somebody felt strongly enough to sponsor it, I think, from leadership. That was one thing that I was trying to Can
[00:40:43] Carolina Caeiro: I quickly come back? Maybe we ask Roman to let us know where this might live. I think that would be useful. And, also, I just wanna say it's the first time that I'm at a dispatch, and I see the conversation being enabled on the content and and not just on the dispatch question. And I think we need to focus on the dispatch question. I just wanted to say that. Thank
[00:41:02] Shu Ping: you. Yeah.
[00:41:03] Mallory Knodel: Okay. Yeah. I'm having a really hard time following the chat, by the way. It's, like, moving really fast. And I so appreciate folks who are actually in earnest trying to sort out some of these rough edges, but I I'm sorry. If you could come on the queue, I'd really be grateful for folks.
[00:41:18] Shu Ping: Okay. Tara, please. Tara.
[00:41:24] Tara Whalen: Tara Whalen, Sovereign Tech Fund. Thank you, Mary, again for this work. I just wanted to say that I do support talking about this more. I don't wanna necessarily discuss the content now, but since you asked for feedback on the content, I don't necessarily see there's a tension here between the transparency and the privacy. I I my preference would be to preserve both. I think the tension here is more about privacy and and self reporting. It's definitely not I think there are other approaches and other bodies where there's there's more of a self reporting, like, pool structure that could be considered, and I'm happy to have those discussions. The other point that I would like to make is around the representation. I think that how much of that representation there is matters. One person out of 10, the research shows that's not a good place to be actually. It could be worse than just having 10 people
[00:42:21] Warren Kumari: changing there.
[00:42:22] Stefan Wenger: So Okay.
[00:42:23] Tara Whalen: I think most of the research point to, like, at least one third is when you start seeing change in the dynamics of the group. So I I I need to refresh myself on that research, but I look forward to having those discussions further in in in in the right setting. Thank you.
[00:42:39] Mallory Knodel: Yeah. Thank you. And if you have a citation for the idea that that one is bad, but two is is better than none, then, that would be very, very helpful.
[00:42:52] Shu Ping: Okay. So, Eric?
[00:42:56] Eric Rescorla: Hi, Mallory. Thanks for bringing this forward. I agree with some of this and but not with some other parts, but I think, rather than, like, gaining the merits. I'm I'm not sure this is modest as modest as you say it is. And I think that really, as with the previous thing, it needs to it actually runs through an ITF process, rather than sort of be kind of, like, 80 sponsored. So I think probably if this is moving forward, it needs to be an actual working group that has a consensus process of whether that's a new one that spun up or we're trying to pre pre take some previous working group. I I don't think I don't think it should be refined in the mailing list and then just sort of brought forward by 80 sponsorship.
[00:43:30] David Schinazi: And David? Hi. David's. I would say my my answer to the dispatch question depends on the scope. If we tighten the scope to just gender as this was originally the case, I think this can be AD AD sponsored. It's simple enough. I think some of these other points are way more complex and would deserve a working group. So my recommendation would be to reduce the scope, publish that, and then tackle the rest in a different document because I think that if you try to tackle it all at once, you might find that it might not get the first part.
[00:44:04] Mallory Knodel: Okay. Thank you. That's, I mean, a reasonable ask. I mean, we could just go back to the o two version, and AD sponsorship slots are open or any kind of sponsorship slots are open.
[00:44:18] Mirja Kühlewind: Okay. Mia Kulivant. Yeah. I'm on a similar line. I think we should do something in this space. I think we should really start with, with focusing on a simple thing, focusing on gender. Of course, you can do more, but this is the one thing where diverse committees have shown to actually have an improvement. And I think we as a community need to be responsible and do something, and that's something we can do. Of course, there are a few of the details that need discussion, but, like, at the end, we just have to make a decision and move on and try it if you focus on gender only. So it could be AD sponsored if you if you try to do the most simple thing possible. If we wanna do more about the noncom, we should maybe consider, like, what other things we need to change if not noncom and that would require a working group, then we could add that discussion there if people are willing to work on that.
[00:45:07] Mallory Knodel: Can I this is actually to you, Maria and David? Sorry. I just wanted to clarify something. So, I mean, the whole draft is about gender. It's just including comportment because a hiring best practice for hiring committees that worry about gender diversity include these other things. It's not just composition of the actual hiring team. It's also the way that they conduct the hiring, etcetera, etcetera. So it's all related to gender. But I think what you're saying this is where I want you to clarify. I think you're saying it's just about the composition, the gender composition, not about those other comportment pieces. Is that what you mean?
[00:45:44] Mirja Kühlewind: Exactly. So the other part is actually something that the nonchrome you know, they can actually decide on their own to work on their own rules. What the exact rules are is maybe also worth a community discussion. But the part where you really require gender diversity in the composition needs process changes, and that's what we need to write down in our
[00:46:00] Eric Rescorla: Okay.
[00:46:01] Mallory Knodel: Thank you for clarifying. I just I also wanted to be clear that I'm not trying to fix all diversity things. I am narrowly focused on gender. It's just that's where the literature points us is that these additional comportment pieces and the actual hiring process also shift gender. Anyway, Dave.
[00:46:18] David Schinazi: And just to very briefly answer your clarification question, what I meant was if composition, focus
[00:46:24] Mallory Knodel: on that.
[00:46:25] Shu Ping: Thank you.
[00:46:25] Mallory Knodel: Got it. Yep. That's what I thought.
[00:46:27] Mirja Kühlewind: One one more point. I mean, initially, I said we should address this problem. There might more things we wanna do, but, like, let's right now focus on composition. Yes.
[00:46:35] Mallory Knodel: Yeah. And, I mean, the it does. Obviously, you can tell. It would have impact on other forms of diversity, like standard, you know, standard interviews, personal conflict. All of that would impact all levels of of diversity. It sort of raises the bar for everyone. But the reason why we're doing this is framed in terms of gender comportment. Anyway, yeah. Sorry.
[00:47:04] Shu Ping: Okay. Roman, please.
[00:47:09] Roman Danyliw: Hi. Roman speaking as a as an area director. As I've done with many other things in Gen, because they are so cross cutting and need the widest possible kind of view, whether it's changing the standards process, changing kind of I n or or doing kind of moderation for something like NOMCOM, which literally changes the entire composition of kind of leadership. I would be uncomfortable running it as an AD sponsor because I would wanna make sure we have maximum review and the high iteration feedback we would need for it. So maybe other ADs are willing to sponsor it. My recommendation would would be if if it was AD sponsored by Roman or kinda something else, it would be we need a working group because I would not sponsor it.
[00:47:50] Mallory Knodel: Okay. Okay. I think I think it's more like there's we're gonna get a lot of we already have. We've had lots of discussion about this version of the draft is already on the IETF list and then in, I think, just a tiny bit in GenDispatch. But the I think the issue will be determining what is consensus. And there's a lot of folks who feel like it's just let's do it. It's common sense. It's small, but, there's never going to be full consensus. Like, that's just we know that's not gonna happen. So I that's what I worry about.
[00:48:26] Shu Ping: Okay. So any other comment? Mister has some time. Okay. If no, for the gen dispatch outcome, I think we got consensus on this work, and it's important. Current for this current draft, it covers a lot of different different things. So it it would be better to narrow down the scope, like, split the work. And so people suggest to first work on the gen their gender aspect, and then later maybe per progress on the work. And, also, Roman sir suggested one meeting list for the noncom eligibility. So there is already a meeting list, and you could discuss there.
[00:49:23] Roman Danyliw: If I might yeah. I just wanted to clarify. We used to have a working group on noncom eligibility. I'm not sure I have the pronunciation right. Was it elegy? And eligibility discusses that mailing list where we can continue to talk about the criteria for the noncom eligibility.
[00:49:36] Shu Ping: Okay. Yeah. So, Mallory, is that okay? And you have?
[00:49:42] Mallory Knodel: This is going to go to elegy. Is that what we're doing? Sorry. It's the version two is gonna go to elegy.
[00:49:51] Roman Danyliw: No. I there's we have a confusion that happens in the ITF where a working group name doesn't align with a mailing list name met, but the mailing list kinda continues. So there used to be a working group called elegy where we define the eligibility criteria for NOMCOM. There's a list associated with it called eligibility discussed, and that's kind of the current place of a live mailing list to talk about NomCom eligibility. The same way for moderation, mod-priv, it's got a ModDiscuss. They're the the list of things kinda don't don't align, but the topic is covered by the mail list.
[00:50:27] Martin Vigneri: But, by the way, Martin speaking. As co chair, my understanding is that
[00:50:32] Mark Nottingham: I understand.
[00:50:33] Martin Vigneri: It should be a focused draft that you send to that you discuss on that mailing list, not the latest 03.
[00:50:43] Mallory Knodel: Yeah. Okay. So 02 well, it's in 03. Is it in 04? Whatever. Take off the last version.
[00:50:51] Martin Vigneri: You go
[00:50:52] Mallory Knodel: back to the previous version. That's fine.
[00:50:53] Roman Danyliw: I heard from the floor that there was some confusion about what Elegy is. Elegy is a closed working group. I am aware that it is a closed working group. As is the IETF kind of pattern, working groups are typically created for a particular topic and list, the lists of closed working groups continue because there might be continued interest kind of in that topic. And so that that happens to be at home, and that's also the reason for the asymmetry between the names. But just to clarify, elegy is a closed working group.
[00:51:20] Shu Ping: Okay. So we got Tara, you want to you you want to join the queue again? No? Okay. David, Eric, I think.
[00:51:32] Eric Rescorla: Yeah. I just wanna suggest that perhaps that outcome wasn't quite as clear cut is the way I heard you kinda characterize it. I I think kinda I would say outcome was kinda all over the place, honestly. So so so I guess I just wanna, like, register the I I and all that's quite as simple as as as it was kind of, reported here.
[00:51:52] Mallory Knodel: Do do you have do you wanna do you wanna clarify what you think the outcome is?
[00:51:56] Rich Salz: I'm I'm
[00:51:56] John Klensin: I mean,
[00:51:56] Eric Rescorla: I don't think think I think think I think the only outcome I heard was Roman's not gonna AD-sponsor this out of out of any mailing list at all. It's the only outcome I heard there's actually definitive outcome. And that that that that that that that and that people and I guess I think it's also fair to say that that that there's a significant sentiment that the draft wasn't okay as it is. Other than that, I think, you know, it's gotta be workshop more as as the as the as the outcome. And then it's Go ahead.
[00:52:21] Mallory Knodel: It's gonna be workshopped in eligibility to discuss.
[00:52:26] Eric Rescorla: Okay. And that's probably true. But okay. Yeah. Sure.
[00:52:30] Shu Ping: Yeah. I mean, to be more clear, I mean, from the dispatch outcome, for now, it's I think more work is needed for Malorie. And the the suggestion is for her is to split the work and focus on the agenda first. And that is the suggestion from the community now. Is that clear? And to discuss it, there is a mailing list suggested. That is a noncom eligibility mailing list. Is that clear? No.
[00:53:08] John Klensin: It's it's clear, but I disagree with it for two reasons. One of them is that I'm very concerned about as I said in the mailing list, I'm very concerned about slippery slope problems here. And I think restricting the initial discussion to a single issue, namely the gender one. Although I think this needs consideration, restricting it to a single issue, like the gender one invites us getting into slippery slope problems as the next one comes along and somebody says, we can't do that because we've already done gender. Or we can't discuss the other alternatives because this is restricted to gender. And I think that's a potential issue. The second, as I mentioned on the mailing list, is the real solution to this problem is to work very hard on increasing the noncomp pool of volunteers in the right directions. Because if we make a rule which says there has to be at least one person here or two people here of category x, we run the risk of gaming that in various ways and of picking somebody for the dumb com who would otherwise be unacceptable on the basis of some purpose or other, simply because meeting of meeting that particular qualification. We're we're saying that in terms of if we do this, we're saying that in terms of selection process, some people are more equal than others. And that's very dangerous in spite of and and that's in spite of the fact that I am, I should say, obviously, by turning on the camera, an example of a of an old white guy.
[00:55:05] Shu Ping: Okay. Jay?
[00:55:07] Mallory Knodel: John, can I respond? I mean, I think you sort of contradicted yourself a little bit about the narrow thing. I mean, slippery slope, I think this being very narrow prevents that slippery slope. I mean, you all this this has been successfully not made into an RFC for three years. If someone shows if this ever moves forward, someone shows up later, I really believe in the powers of the IETF to stop work from happening that it doesn't want. So, I'm trying to keep the slippery slope from happening explicitly by making this as probably narrow as possible. But we I don't think we need to discuss more content here. I think we're still dealing with this question.
[00:55:51] John Klensin: I I I agree, although, as you are probably not surprised, I disagree with that analysis simply because something simply because what has been said several times is we do gender, and then we can rechart it to other things.
[00:56:05] Mallory Knodel: I I don't think anybody has suggested that. I haven't, certainly. So
[00:56:12] Jay Daly: So Jay Daly, the ITF executive director. Yeah. I I think Mallory was a little bit more generous than I would be there. I wanna push back on the idea that gender is somehow comparable to other forms of things such as, you know, whether we have more operators or more people from equipment manufacturers or of these type of things. Gender is a is a fundamental thing about human society. And for us to sort of consider it as simply a division or, you know, a dimension by which once we start dimensionality, we go down a slippery path, I think, is an inappropriate way to consider it.
[00:56:48] John Klensin: Yeah. I I agree with that given your examples, Jay. But but since analogies to I can were brought up in this early in this discussion, I note that they do have geographic restrictions as well as as well as gender and other kinds of restrictions.
[00:57:04] Mark Nottingham: Well, for
[00:57:04] Mallory Knodel: good reason. I think ICANN needs to be on par with ITU in terms of global numbering system. And so there's like really solid reasons why ICANN cares a lot more about geographic diversity than maybe the IETF would need to, but that's a total aside. We
[00:57:19] Shu Ping: shouldn't Well,
[00:57:21] John Klensin: it's it's it's it's a total aside, but again, I can argue for geographic diversity. I'm not gonna argue for other kinds of things that would be more Right.
[00:57:32] Mallory Knodel: Because you were right about the slippery slope. So it would be weird if you were arguing for additional dimensions to be included, John.
[00:57:38] John Klensin: Okay.
[00:57:43] Shu Ping: So that would be more work is needed for this one. And the mailing list, some could stay on the gen dispatch, and some part can go to the eligibility discuss mailing list. Okay.
[00:58:01] Mallory Knodel: Thanks.
[00:58:02] Shu Ping: Thank you. And we have three minutes left. So I would suggest if you, Pete and Mark, you you can announce your work, let the working group know, but I don't think it's appropriate to dispatch because people don't. Okay.
[00:58:29] Mark Nottingham: Pete and I noticed that that on occasion in in in working groups that we're involved in, for example, for me, HTTP APIs, the definition of consensus is is largely left to lore in the community, and writing it down in in a in a more robust fashion might help these groups come to consensus more easily. And and theoretically, it it might help in other groups from time to time too. I don't know if there are other controversies about consensus out there. Sorry. Left to lure. Yes. I think there are people in our organization who have a lot of experience with consensus, and they share it in in dribs and drabs and and and as the situation merits, but we haven't written down a lot of of how we think about consensus. And so Pete and I spend a little time scribbling. We are definitely not done. I think what we want to eventually ask agenda dispatch is, should we continue to start? So there's a draft. It's on the mailing list. We would welcome feedback, and we'll probably do an o one and maybe an o two, and then perhaps talk again in a future meeting.
[00:59:40] Shu Ping: Okay. Thank you. And that finish. So we that's it, and thank you very much.