Complaint to IAB regarding IESG decisions (Daniel J. Bernstein) - 2025-10-24
Email: Re: Complaint to IAB regarding IESG decisions - 2025-11-01
From: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>
Subject: [IAB] Re: Complaint to IAB regarding IESG decisions
Date: November 1, 2025 at 7:36:32 AM EDT
To: iab@iab.org
Cc: ietf@ietf.org
Dear IAB, cc'ing ietf@ietf.org for transparency:
My filing https://cr.yp.to/2025/20251024-rules.pdf included a list of
five requested IAB actions. The fourth action had two parts, where the
first part ("please reverse IESG's decision to violate this") has now
been overtaken by events, so I am no longer asking IAB for that part. To
be clear, the second part of the fourth request remains applicable, as
do the first, second, third, and fifth requests.
Concretely, on 1 November 2025, IESG finally instructed the AD to
address the underlying consensus question. However, IESG has not revoked
its decisions regarding transparency, regarding multiple-AD obligations,
regarding the BCP 9 complaint chain, regarding the BCP 78 rules, or
regarding the procedural question of whether an "Informational" RFC such
as RFC 3710 can override a seeming IETF policy such as RFC 2026.
A few added notes seem warranted regarding BCP 78. IESG continues to
misrepresent BCP 78, and has issued a renewed threat to disregard any
future appeals that invoke the BCP 78 opt-out procedure. The IETF
"moderators", citing IESG's recent dictates on the topic, claimed that
my invocation of the BCP 78 opt-out procedure was "disruptive behavior",
and they threatened a list ban if I did it again. As far as I can tell,
neither IESG nor the IETF "moderators" have any authority to issue a ban
on this basis. I asked the "moderators" on 25 October 2025 (off list) to
publicly quote and answer the following questions:
-
"What exactly do you claim this opt-out provision is
disrupting?" -
"Why exactly do you believe that you and/or IESG have authority
under IETF policy to threaten a ban in response to opt-out
provisions?" -
"RFC 9245 specifies what's inappropriate for the IETF mailing
list. RFC 9245 doesn't authorize you to take action in other
cases. Are you claiming that the opt-out provision is 'unrelated
to IETF policy'?"
On 29 October 2025 (off list), the IETF "moderators" refused to answer.
The threatened ban by the "moderators" is not currently the subject of
an appeal to IAB, but it is an example of the continuing importance of
the IESG decisions that I have appealed to IAB.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
---D. J. Bernstein
===== NOTICES =====
This document may not be modified, and derivative works of it may not be
created, and it may not be published except as an Internet-Draft. (That
sentence is the official language from IETF's "Legend Instructions" for
the situation that "the Contributor does not wish to allow modifications
nor to allow publication as an RFC". I'm fine with redistribution of
copies of this document; the issue is with modification.)