Community considerations on DNS WG structures at IETF
draft-hardaker-dns-wgs-at-ietf-07

[Ballot discuss]
To the document authors: Thank you for the patience with my unintended surprise of converting my ABSTAIN ballot to a DISCUSS.  In preparing for the telechat this morning, I found two more ABSTAIN ballots filed by other ADs similar to my own position and began to explore more history on the document.

To the responsible AD: DNS discussions occur in many forums in the IETF and this document is at this nexus.  As it is AD sponsored, there is no obvious venue like a WG mailing list to see the WGLC that established the rough consensus to publish this document.  Is there some venue (e.g., non-wg or non-wg mailing?  proceedings?) I could be reviewing where most of the discussion that established rough consensus to publish?  I’m guided primarily by RFC8789 (which constrained ADs on sponsored informational and experimental status documents).

The one tangible set of discussions I can find is on IETF LC thread/set of feedback (starting at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/last-call/4UPfZ6pQU24Iof3Ic5pt5L3zDi0/). I can see a few objections to publication, responses from authors/ADs, a process discussion, and assigned Last Call Directorate feedback.  I’m not disputing that there aren’t responses to objections.  I’m hunting for the affirmative basis of the more foundational rough consensus to say that this should be published at all (rather than lack of objections).

[Ballot comment]

==[ PRIOR ABSTAIN TEXT ]==
I applaud the community engagement on considering what organizational structure should be used to standardize DNS-related topics.  I can see how this style analysis could be input to inform future organizational design.  Nevertheless, I am balloting ABSTAIN on this document because I don’t believe it should be published as an RFC.

(1) It isn’t clear what it means to have community consensus on a series of facilitated consultations.  There is nothing for the community to evaluate or find consensus on beyond agreeing that the facilitation process collected what it did (whether you agree or not) and on the utility of publication.

(2) The motivating premise of needing a stable reference for future assessments only being possible with an RFC seems to be challenged by the practical reality of I-Ds in fact being permanent with our archiving system, and that I-Ds are already service as these stable reference regularly for “Specification Required” code point registrations.

[Ballot comment]
Thanks to the authors, the members of this team, and everyone that participated in this exercise. This is very helpful and you have my gratitude for this service that you have done to the community.

I see this document as a recommendation from the community to the IESG to organize DNS related work across areas and WGs. I believe that the document has achieved that goal and I am very optimistic that the IESG will act on it.

That said, I see no purpose or value for this to be published as an RFC. It is a record for history but is Informational and not Historic. I-Ds are archived and so will this document along with the IESG ballot as a matter of records for history.

I will request the sponsoring AD to consider not publishing this document, but will not stand in the way if they decide to do so anyway.

[Ballot comment]
I want to thank the authors (and everyone they worked with) for doing the hard work of understanding what is needed from an overhaul of DNS WGs. This was super valuable as guidance.

Unrelated to the value of the work, I do not believe this needs or even should be published as an RFC. Since this is exactly limited to guidance for IETF participants and leadership internally, with absolutely no affect on implementers of DNS standards, there is no need for publication. Doing so just creates noise in the RFC series for those searching for RFCs relevant to a product or technology they work on, not to mention takes space in the RFC editor queue without benefit to the technical community beyond the IETF.

To me, this is the same as WGs publishing their internal requirements documents that show WG consensus on what they need from their future standards as RFCs, where only the WG needs the information. The document lives forever in the archive, so the information is just as safe and immutable, it just doesn't require review process for publication. I know this is also a practice where the community and IESG members have differing opinions. This document may be the kick I need to propose some formal guidance on this larger topic.

[Ballot comment]
I applaud the community engagement on considering what organizational structure should be used to standardize DNS-related topics.  I can see how this style analysis could be input to inform future organizational design.  Nevertheless, I am balloting ABSTAIN on this document because I don’t believe it should be published as an RFC.

(1) It isn’t clear what it means to have community consensus on a series of facilitated consultations.  There is nothing for the community to evaluate or find consensus on beyond agreeing that the facilitation process collected what it did (whether you agree or not) and on the utility of publication.

(2) The motivating premise of needing a stable reference for future assessments only being possible with an RFC seems to be challenged by the practical reality of I-Ds in fact being permanent with our archiving system, and that I-Ds are already service as these stable reference regularly for “Specification Required” code point registrations.

[Ballot comment]
Thanks for the work done including the interviews and the aggregation. I fully support the publication of this document for archiving/historical purposes. I also appreciate the mention of dnsdir with its future role in DNSdispatch.

Minor comments anyway:

### Section 1.2

I was unable to find any use of BCP14 terms in the text, so, let's remove this section ?


### Section 2.2

This section mentions DNSAPP, which is not part of the list of groups of section 1.1.

# draft-hardaker-dns-wgs-at-ietf

## Shepherd Writeup

### Document History

1. Was the document considered in any WG, and if so, why was it not adopted as a
work item there?

The document contains the outcome of the community consultation about how to restructure DNS-related working groups
and how to divide DNS work between them. As such, this work is not covered by
any WG's charter, and adoption correctly was not attempted.

2. Was there controversy about particular points that caused the WG to not adopt
the document?

n/a (no adoption attempted)

3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent? If
so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)

No.

4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the contents of
the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers indicated
plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported somewhere,
either in the document itself (as RFC 7942 recommends) or elsewhere
(where)?

n/a (not a protocol document)

### Additional Reviews

5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in other
IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore benefit
from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which
reviews took place.

The document contents interact closely with DNS-related working groups. To
ensure their review, it has been circulated widely across WGs and in area
sessions, and a separate mailing list has been set up for collecting and
discussing feedback. This in fact was the main exercise that informed the
contents of the document. Examples for community consultation include:

* IETF#124 OPSAREA: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/124/materials/slides-124-opsarea-06-dnsietf-structural-conversation-00
* IETF#125 OPSAREA: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/125/materials/slides-125-opsarea-dnsietf-considerations-00
* Also last slide of:  https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/125/materials/slides-125-opsarea-1-chairs-slides-01

It is the Shepherd's impression that this review process was sufficiently
comprehensive.

There is no interaction with external organizations.

6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review criteria,
such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

n/a (no formal expert review criteria)

7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the module
been checked with any of the recommended validation tools for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module
comply with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified
in RFC 8342?

n/a (no YANG module)

8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of the
final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code,
BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.

n/a

### Document Shepherd Checks

9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion that this
document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready
to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?

Yes.

10. Several IETF Areas have assembled lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter. For which areas have such issues been identified
and addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent
reviews?

The lists mainly relate to protocol development (such as internationalization,
backward compatibility). Thus, none of the topics listed at
https://wiki.ietf.org/group/iesg/ExpertTopics apply here.

11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream (Best
Current Practice, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard,
Informational, Experimental or Historic)? Why is this the proper type
of RFC? Do all Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?

In response to IETF Last Call, the requested publication type was changed from
Historic to Informational. This was after a detailed discussion on when the
Historic status is warranted, and finally publication as an Informational
document found rough consensus. Datatracker attributes reflect this correctly.

12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the intellectual
property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79? To
the best of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If
not, explain why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links
to publicly-available messages when applicable.

The document does not contain any content that could be covered by IPR.

13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page
is greater than five, please provide a justification.

The Shepherd has verified this with the authors.

14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the idnits
tool is not enough; please review the "Content Guidelines" on
authors.ietf.org. (Also note that the current idnits tool generates
some incorrect warnings; a rewrite is underway.)

Authors have fixed relevant nits raised in the first Shepherd review, and none
remain.

15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the IESG
Statement on Normative and Informative References.

No.

16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone. Did
the community have sufficient access to review any such normative
references?

n/a (all normative references freely available)

17. Are there any normative downward references (see RFC 3967 and BCP
97) that are not already listed in the DOWNREF registry? If so,
list them.

No.

18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state?
If so, what is the plan for their completion?

No.

19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs? If
so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those RFCs
listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If not, explain why and point to the part of the document
where the relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.

No.

20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations section,
especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the document.
Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm
that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm
that each newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents,
allocations procedures, and a reasonable name (see RFC 8126).

All confirmed.

21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear?
Please include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.

n/a (no new IANA registries)

Request for IETF Last Call review by OPSDIR Completed: Has Issues. Reviewer: Qin Wu. Sent review to list. Submission of review completed at an earlier date.

The following Last Call announcement was sent out (ends 2026-05-08):

From: The IESG
To: IETF-Announce
CC: draft-hardaker-dns-wgs-at-ietf@ietf.org, mohamed.boucadair@orange.com, peter@desec.io
Reply-To: last-call@ietf.org
Sender:
Subject: Last Call:  (Community considerations on DNS WG structures at IETF) to Historic RFC


The IESG has received a request from an individual submitter to consider the
following document: - 'Community considerations on DNS WG structures at IETF'
  as Historic RFC

The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits final
comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
last-call@ietf.org mailing lists by 2026-05-08. Exceptionally, comments may
be sent to iesg@ietf.org instead. In either case, please retain the beginning
of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

Abstract


  There has been an increasing level of discussion within the IETF
  about the best Working Group (WG) structures for handling the wide
  array of DNS work being conducted within the IETF.  As part of
  community consultation, a team coordinated by Wes Hardaker was asked
  to gather information from the community at large through e-mail,
  hallway discussions, and meetings and create a small team to discuss
  potential structural changes to be shared with the community.  This
  document is the result of that effort.

  The outcome of the consultation is retained for historic reference.




The file can be obtained via
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-hardaker-dns-wgs-at-ietf/



No IPR declarations have been submitted directly on this I-D.

### Document History

1. Was the document considered in any WG, and if so, why was it not adopted as a
work item there?

The document contains the outcome of the community consultation about how to restructure DNS-related working groups
and how to divide DNS work between them. As such, this work is not covered by
any WG's charter, and adoption correctly was not attempted.

2. Was there controversy about particular points that caused the WG to not adopt
the document?

n/a (no adoption attempted)

3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent? If
so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)

No.

4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the contents of
the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers indicated
plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported somewhere,
either in the document itself (as RFC 7942 recommends) or elsewhere
(where)?

n/a (not a protocol document)

### Additional Reviews

5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in other
IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore benefit
from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which
reviews took place.

The document contents interact closely with DNS-related working groups. To
ensure their review, it has been circulated widely across WGs and in area
sessions, and a separate mailing list has been set up for collecting and
discussing feedback. This in fact was the main exercise that informed the
contents of the document. Examples for community consultation include:

* IETF#124 OPSAREA: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/124/materials/slides-124-opsarea-06-dnsietf-structural-conversation-00
* IETF#125 OPSAREA: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/125/materials/slides-125-opsarea-dnsietf-considerations-00
* Also last slide of:  https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/125/materials/slides-125-opsarea-1-chairs-slides-01

It is the Shepherd's impression that this review process was sufficiently
comprehensive.

There is no interaction with external organizations.

6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review criteria,
such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

n/a (no formal expert review criteria)

7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the module
been checked with any of the recommended validation tools for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module
comply with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified
in RFC 8342?

n/a (no YANG module)

8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of the
final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code,
BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.

n/a

### Document Shepherd Checks

9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion that this
document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready
to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?

Yes.

10. Several IETF Areas have assembled lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter. For which areas have such issues been identified
and addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent
reviews?

The lists mainly relate to protocol development (such as internationalization,
backward compatibility). Thus, none of the topics listed at
https://wiki.ietf.org/group/iesg/ExpertTopics apply here.

11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream (Best
Current Practice, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard,
Informational, Experimental or Historic)? Why is this the proper type
of RFC? Do all Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?

The requested publication type is Historic, which is intended for a
"specification that has been superseded by a more recent specification or is for
any other reason considered to be obsolete" (RFC 2026 Section 4.2.4). Although
the document is not a specification, it seems appropriate to use the "other
reason" clause to label this historical record for what it is. The Shepherd
notes that Informational would be a possibility as well.

12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the intellectual
property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79? To
the best of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If
not, explain why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links
to publicly-available messages when applicable.

The document does not contain any content that could be covered by IPR.

13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page
is greater than five, please provide a justification.

The Shepherd has verified this with the authors.

14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the idnits
tool is not enough; please review the "Content Guidelines" on
authors.ietf.org. (Also note that the current idnits tool generates
some incorrect warnings; a rewrite is underway.)

The references in the requirements language boilerplate are broken, and the
authors have been made aware so this can be fixed in an upcoming revision.
There are no other relevant nits.

15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the IESG
Statement on Normative and Informative References.

No.

16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone. Did
the community have sufficient access to review any such normative
references?

n/a (all normative references freely available)

17. Are there any normative downward references (see RFC 3967 and BCP
97) that are not already listed in the DOWNREF registry? If so,
list them.

No.

18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state?
If so, what is the plan for their completion?

No.

19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs? If
so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those RFCs
listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If not, explain why and point to the part of the document
where the relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.

No.

20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations section,
especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the document.
Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm
that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm
that each newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents,
allocations procedures, and a reasonable name (see RFC 8126).

All confirmed.

21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear?
Please include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.

n/a (no new IANA registries)