The IETF-ISOC Relationship
draft-ietf-iasa2-rfc2031bis-08

[Ballot comment]
Section 1

  The growth of the Internet over several decades also led to the
  growth of the IETF.  More and more people, organizations, and
  companies rely on Internet Standards.  Non-technical issues, such as

I suppose we can ignore the elephant in the room that the Internet runs on
Proposed Standards.

Section 2

  community.  Open standards are an explicit part of one of the focus
  areas in ISOC's mission: Advancing the development and application of
  Internet infrastructure, technologies, and open standards.

Perhaps a reference to https://www.internetsociety.org/mission/ is in
order?

Section 3

  The IETF remains responsible for the development and quality of the
  Internet Standards.  Apart from the roles described below, the IETF
  and ISOC acknowledge that ISOC has no influence whatsoever on the
  technical content of Internet Standards.

As for Roman, this struck me as perhaps overly strong, and perhaps
intended to refer to "organizational" influence or influence "as an
institution", though perhaps the later text about involvement of ISOC
employees "as individual contributors rather than on institutional
grounds" suffices.

Section 5

  The charter of the IAB (Internet Architecture Board) [RFC2850] states
  that "the IAB acts as a source of advice and guidance to the Board of
  Trustees and Officers of the Internet Society concerning technical,
  architectural, procedural, and (where appropriate) policy matters
  pertaining to the Internet and its enabling technologies".  This

Is there anything on the  ISOC side that documents how they accept
advice from the IAB or reach out to the IAB for such advice?

Section 6

  trademarks, copyrights, and intellectual property rights.  As part of
  the IETF Trust arrangement, IETF standards documents can be freely
  downloaded, copied, and distributed without financial or other
  distribution restrictions, though all rights to change these
  documents lie with the IETF.  The IETF Trust also provides legal

Is that truly "all rights" or only as it applies to documents published
under the RFC 5378 terms (as opposed to, say, the "pre5378Trust200902"
ipr attribute in the XML vocabulary)?

Section 7

  Under the new IASA 2.0 structure, the IETF is solely responsible for
  its administration, including the IETF Trust, IAB, IESG, IETF working
  groups, and other IETF processes.  A further exploration of this can

I'm not sure whether there's a nit here or not, but it kind of reads
like this is saying that (e.g.) "IETF working groups" are part of the
IETF's "administration", which requires a certain mindset to seem true.

Section 13

I agree with the secdir reviewer that having a link to the LLC
operational agreement would be helpful.

[Ballot comment]
I agree with Alvaro that I-D.ietf-iasa2-rfc4071bis should be a Normative reference, and also that there should be a better reference / more info on ISOC.

I also found the phrasing of:
"The Poised95 Working Group concluded that the Internet Society (ISOC), which was formed in 1992, was the best organization" to be somewhat awkward -- I initially misread it as saying that Poised95 was formed in 1992, and it took a few passes to figure out what it was referring to; unfortunately I don't have any suggestions on how to reword to address this, other than removing ", which was formed in 1992," (which doesn't really seem relevant).

[Ballot comment]
** Section 1.  Typo.  s/the the/the/

** Section 3 makes the absolute statement that “the IETF and ISOC acknowledge that ISOC has no influence whatsoever on the technical content of the Internet standards”.  Section 4 reminds us that “ISOC maintain[ing] liaison relationships … with other … SDOs”.  Stretching a bit, given the reliance of the IETF on these key SDO relationships, the ability to or timeliness in forming/keeping these relationships could conceivably indirectly influence technical standards.  IMO, s/ISOC has no influence/ISOC has no direct influence/.

Derived from Hilarie Orman’s SECDIR review:

** Section 7.  Per “Under the terms of the Operating Agreement [OpAgreement] between ISOC and the IETF, ISOC has agreed to provide some funding support for the IETF (ISOC has historically provided the IETF with significant financial support)”, what is the difference between “some funding” and “significant funding support”?

** References.  Explicitly point to https://www.ietf.org/documents/180/IETF-LLC-Agreement.pdf for [OpAgreement]

[Ballot comment]
Thanks for a clear, easy-to-read document. I have two small comments.

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§1:

>  This led to documenting
>  things such as the IETF standards process [RFC2026], the IETF
>  organizational structure [RFC2028], the IETF Nominating Committee
>  (NomCom) procedures [RFC2282], and the IETF-ISOC relationship
>  [RFC2031].

The selection of RFC 2282 here seems arbitrary, as it was not the initial
version of BCP 10 (which would be RFC 2027), nor is it the current one
(RFC 7437). Perhaps a reference directly to BCP 10 instead of a specific
RFC would be the cleanest way to address this (as mention of an obsoleted
version without also pointing to the current procedure seems a bit awkward).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

§7:

>  Under the new IASA 2.0 structure, the IETF is solely responsible for
>  its administration, including the IETF Trust, IAB, IESG, IETF working
>  groups, and other IETF processes.  A further exploration of this can
>  be found in Section 4 of [I-D.ietf-iasa2-rfc4071bis].

The mention of "the IETF" in "...the IETF is solely responsible..." feels
somewhat ambiguous on the heels of significant treatment of the IETF LLC.
Clearly, the responsibilities enumerated here are the responsibility of
"The IETF" as that term has historically been used (the IETF community at
large). Perhaps including "IETF LLC" in the list of things that "the IETF"
is responsible for would make the distinction more clear.

[Ballot comment]
Two easy to address comments:

(1) §1: "As a result of the the IASA 2.0 structure [I-D.ietf-iasa2-rfc4071bis] and formation of the IETF LLC, the relationship between the IETF and ISOC has changed."  I think that I-D.ietf-iasa2-rfc4071bis should be a Normative reference. 

(2) I-D.ietf-iasa2-rfc4071bis uses this document as a Normative reference, and points to it when defining ISOC (in §4.1); but there is no explicit reference to ISOC, or even its mission (which seems to be quoted in §2).  Please add one.

[Ballot comment]
I find the wording in Section 2 to be a bit odd: it sounds like it’s saying that things have always been the case before, but are perhaps so no longer.  Can we re-word it a little to make it clear that these aspects have not changed, though other details of the relationship have?  Maybe something like this (adjust as you see appropriate):

”ISOC and the IETF have historically been and remain philosophically aligned. ISOC's connection with the IETF community has always played an important role in its policy work.  ISOC has always been an advocate for multistakeholder processes, which include the technical community.  These have not changed, and open standards are an explicit part of one of the focus areas in ISOC's mission: Advancing the development and application of Internet infrastructure, technologies, and open standards.”

Where Section 4 cites RFC 7437, it should cite 7437bis.

While I always find British spellings delightful, ISOC’s own web site uses “program” (see, for example, https://www.internetsociety.org/fellowship/ietf-policy-program/).  We should be consistent with that.

The first sentence of Section 7 leads me to expect the paragraph to continue talking about funding from ISOC, but it has nothing further to do with that.  I suggest a paragraph break after the first sentence, and removing ”in particular” from the second.

  Note that it is possible
  that some of those services are provided by ISOC or involve ISOC
  staff.

I would say “may be provided”.  Does that not feel better?

(Via drafts-lastcall@iana.org): IESG/Authors/WG Chairs:

The IANA Functions Operator has reviewed draft-ietf-iasa2-rfc2031bis-05, which is currently in Last Call, and has the following comments:

We understand that this document doesn't require any registry actions.

While it's often helpful for a document's IANA Considerations section to remain in place upon publication even if there are no actions, if the authors strongly prefer to remove it, we do not object.

If this assessment is not accurate, please respond as soon as possible.

Thank you,

Sabrina Tanamal
Senior IANA Services Specialist

The following Last Call announcement was sent out (ends 2019-08-05):

From: The IESG
To: IETF-Announce
CC: jon.peterson@neustar.biz, iasa20@ietf.org, alissa@cooperw.in, Jon Peterson , iasa2-chairs@ietf.org, draft-ietf-iasa2-rfc2031bis@ietf.org
Reply-To: ietf@ietf.org
Sender:
Subject: Last Call:  (The IETF-ISOC Relationship) to Informational RFC


The IESG has received a request from the IETF Administrative Support Activity
2 WG (iasa2) to consider the following document: - 'The IETF-ISOC
Relationship'
  as Informational 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
ietf@ietf.org mailing lists by 2019-08-05. 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


  This document summarises the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) -
  Internet Society (ISOC) relationship, following a major revision to
  the structure of the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) in
  2018.  The IASA was revised under a new "IASA 2.0" structure by the
  IASA2 Working Group, which changed the IETF's administrative, legal,
  and financial structure.  As a result, it also changed the
  relationship between the IETF and ISOC, which made it necessary to
  revise RFC 2031.




The file can be obtained via
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-iasa2-rfc2031bis/

IESG discussion can be tracked via
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-iasa2-rfc2031bis/ballot/


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

1. Summary

Back in the day, RFC2031 described the relationship between the IETF and the Internet Society, in particular reviewing the history and philosophy behind the IETF's connection to the Internet Society. The new IASA 2.0 structure changes that relationship in several salient particulars. This document simply revises this prior Informational document to reflect the IASA 2.0 changes.

2. Review and Consensus

This document was thoroughly reviewed by the IASA2.0 WG, and received a good amount of comment. There is a consensus to advance the document.

3. Intellectual Property

This document is not a protocol specification and it contains no technical solutions that might require a disclosure.

4. Other Points

This revision changes RFC2031 as little as possible. The language is careful to reinforce that the IETF LLC does not portend a severance of the IETF from ISOC, but instead an ongoing, evolving relationship.

1. Summary

Back in the day, RFC2031 described the relationship between the IETF and the Internet Society, in particular reviewing the history and philosophy behind the IETF's connection to the Internet Society. The new IASA 2.0 structure changes that relationship in several salient particulars. This document simply revises this prior Informational document to reflect the IASA 2.0 changes.

2. Review and Consensus

This document was thoroughly reviewed by the IASA2.0 WG, and received a good amount of comment. There is a consensus to advance the document.

3. Intellectual Property

This document is not a protocol specification and it contains no technical solutions that might require a disclosure.

4. Other Points

This revision changes RFC2031 as little as possible. The language is careful to reinforce that the IETF LLC does not portend a severance of the IETF from ISOC, but instead an ongoing, evolving relationship.