RE: IPS: FCIP & this list

[Black_David@emc.com]

Ralph,

> There are minutes (well, more like discussion notes) from the 
> conference call and I will ask that they be posted to this 
> reflector.

That'll be an improvement, thanks.  Discussion notes are 
exactly the sort of thing that should to be visible on this
reflector.

> The interim FCIP drafts and issues lists are maintained in PDF
> format, amounting to between .2M and .5M of new material per 
> week. Since this is Rome, they cannot be posted to this reflector.
> It is totally impractical to translate the PDFs to text, sorry.

That's a judgment call.  Actually sending the PDFs to the list
or the I-D servers is a no-no, but it would be ok to put them
on a web site and post URLs to the list, as long as new text
versions of the draft do go to the I-D servers at reasonable
intervals.  It would also be ok to keep the interim PDF versions
private among the authors until the next major revision of
the draft is ready for the I-D servers.  There's
no requirement to make all working notes visible.

I do need to clarify one point of process:

> I doubt that the
> WG Last Calls time requirement would be shortened by more than
> 10% even if everything done by the FCIP authors was posted
> to this reflector.  In particular, I see no reason to believe 
> that the people who will raise Last Call issues will remember
> earlier postings here, or bother to participate on this 
> reflector prior to Last Call.

My concern is that the existence of prior discussion on this
reflector can be a significant factor in whether an issue raised
in WG Last Call causes the Last Call to fail.  If one can point
to prior discussion or even acceptance without discussion on this
list of a technical approach that is questioned during WG Last
Call, then such an issue may be resolvable by pointing to that
discussion and indicating that the WG considered the alternative
and has rough consensus to proceed as currently specified.  OTOH,
if the issue is new to the reflector and technically valid, the
odds of the WG Last Call failing are significantly increased.
WG Last Call periods are measured in weeks (at least 2, but the
initial WG Last Call period for each of the main protocol
drafts is likely to be longer).  If a WG Last Call fails, the
draft has to be revised, and the WG Last Call repeated; we went
through one of these cycles with the iSCSI requirements draft.

Thanks,
--David

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