Subject: [Dots] Reminder on the charter of DOTS and that multiple scenarios are in scope

From: Tobias Gondrom <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2015 21:11:06 +0200

Dear WG fellows,

over the last few weeks, I have noticed on one or two occasions that 
individuals may have claimed on the mailing-list that some use cases 
would be out-of-scope for the DOTS WG. Sometimes these assertions have 
been made ignoring our published and well-defined WG charter.
I recognise that some people may not yet have so much experience working 
within the IETF community or that from the perspective of individual 
companies there may be incentives to exclude certain use cases that are 
not relevant to the individual company's business.

However, I like to remind us all that:
1. We are participating in the IETF as individuals, seeking the best 
overall technical solution based on rough consensus and running code.
2. Our WG belongs to all equally and we do have WG consensus on the 
charter as published.
If you are not sure about the charter, please take a read here: 
http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dots/charter/
(as excerpt the first sentence from the charter: "The aim of DDoS Open 
Threat Signaling (DOTS) is to develop a standards based approach for the 
realtime signaling of DDoS related telemetry and threat handling 
requests and data between elements concerned with DDoS attack detection, 
classification, traceback, and mitigation.")

I am very pleased with all contributions and all the great discussions 
happening here on the mailing-list. Our charter is well crafted and well 
defined. I hope going forward we could simply follow our great charter 
and focus on the actual work. We should be careful to avoid individual 
attempts of re-interpretations based on company perspectives about what 
would be out-of-scope of the WG.

And I like to explicitly welcome and encourage all contributions that 
are within our published charter. And if you have any questions about 
IETF process, I will be happy to assist with explanations going forward. 
Please just drop me a note.

Thank you for your participation in the DOTS WG and I am very much 
looking forward to the upcoming use case and requirements drafts and 
hopefully the soon following protocol drafts.

Best regards,

Tobias (co-chair)

---

From: Xiaohong Deng <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2015 05:33:56 +0000

Thanks Chair for clarifying that this "out-of-scope" claim is personal opinion but NOT WG consensus, and pointing out where we are heading for - addressing multiple important use cases to better tackle the problem statement, from IETF point of view, by and large.

I think this clarification helps both those who are not familiar with IETF process yet willing to contribute and those who could use a bit catch up with mailing-list...

Cheers,
Xiaohong

________________________________
From: Dots [[email-masked]] on behalf of Tobias Gondrom [[email-masked]]
Sent: 05 October 2015 06:11
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: [Dots] Reminder on the charter of DOTS and that multiple scenarios are in scope

Dear WG fellows,

over the last few weeks, I have noticed on one or two occasions that individuals may have claimed on the mailing-list that some use cases would be out-of-scope for the DOTS WG. Sometimes these assertions have been made ignoring our published and well-defined WG charter.
I recognise that some people may not yet have so much experience working within the IETF community or that from the perspective of individual companies there may be incentives to exclude certain use cases that are not relevant to the individual company's business.

However, I like to remind us all that:
1. We are participating in the IETF as individuals, seeking the best overall technical solution based on rough consensus and running code.
2. Our WG belongs to all equally and we do have WG consensus on the charter as published.
If you are not sure about the charter, please take a read here: http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dots/charter/
(as excerpt the first sentence from the charter: "The aim of DDoS Open Threat Signaling (DOTS) is to develop a standards based approach for the realtime signaling of DDoS related telemetry and threat handling requests and data between elements concerned with DDoS attack detection, classification, traceback, and mitigation.")

I am very pleased with all contributions and all the great discussions happening here on the mailing-list. Our charter is well crafted and well defined. I hope going forward we could simply follow our great charter and focus on the actual work. We should be careful to avoid individual attempts of re-interpretations based on company perspectives about what would be out-of-scope of the WG.

And I like to explicitly welcome and encourage all contributions that are within our published charter. And if you have any questions about IETF process, I will be happy to assist with explanations going forward. Please just drop me a note.

Thank you for your participation in the DOTS WG and I am very much looking forward to the upcoming use case and requirements drafts and hopefully the soon following protocol drafts.

Best regards,

Tobias (co-chair)

---

From: "Roland Dobbins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2015 11:39:51 +0700

[I apparently missed this message on 5Oct2015; apologies for the late 
reply!]

On 5 Oct 2015, at 2:11, Tobias Gondrom wrote:

> "The aim of DDoS Open Threat Signaling (DOTS) is to develop a 
> standards based approach for the realtime signaling of DDoS related 
> telemetry and threat handling requests and data between elements 
> concerned with DDoS attack detection, classification, traceback, and 
> mitigation.")

As a WG participant who contributed to that specific wording in the 
charter, please allow me to clarify its intended meaning.

The 'telemetry' part was not meant to imply that the DOTS WG should take 
on the huge task of further redefining existing telemetry standards such 
as IPFIX as a goal in and of itself.  This is a much bigger job with 
implications far beyond the realm of threat signaling.

The intent was to ensure that we could potentially utilize existing 
telemetry mechanisms for the purpose of signaling and communicating 
threat handling requests, and to potentially explore the extension of 
those standards, if necessary, in order to enhance their suitability for 
the threat signaling and the communication of threat handling requests, 
nothing more.  The emphasis was meant to be on the 'signaling' and 
'threat handling' parts, not the 'telemetry' parts.

Very specifically, 'signaling of DDoS related telemetry' does not imply 
'redefinition of DDoS related telemetry'.

> We should be careful to avoid individual attempts of 
> re-interpretations

The above is not in fact a re-interpretation; as the WG participant who 
contributed the specific verbiage in question, it is a statement of the 
literal meaning of the verbiage in question by the individual who 
contributed it to the DOTS WG charter.

See <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/dots/current/msg00131.html>.

> based on company perspectives about what would be out-of-scope of the 
> WG.

To clarify, expressed views regarding the expansion of the scope of the 
DOTS WG beyond threat signaling are wholly unrelated to company 
perspectives.

They are the expression of legitimate concerns by individual 
contributors to the DOTS WG that by expanding the focus of the DOTS WG 
beyond the realm of threat signaling, we are inadvertently embracing a 
much larger task than establishing a standards-based mechanism for 
threats-signaling and which has the potential to jeopardizes our ability 
to focus on the completion of the DOTS WG goal of establishing a 
standards-based mechanism within a relatively short timeframe.

-----------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <[email-masked]>

---

From: Tobias Gondrom <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2015 21:13:49 +0100

Dear Roland,

your concerns have been noted.

Please note that the chairs have spend significant time on re-reading 
all relevant emails, your previous comments, the charter text itself and 
discussions leading up to WG consensus on the charter. And as mentioned 
before, the chairs and the AD were unanimous in our understanding of the 
charter.

Furthermore, I note that you now have for a second time made statements 
that might give others the impression that you would claim to be the 
authoritative person as to the meaning of the charter text. E.g. in "As 
a WG participant who contributed to that specific wording in the 
charter, please allow me to clarify its intended meaning." or "...by the 
individual who contributed it to the DOTS WG charter."

To avoid misunderstanding from other WG members about your comments, let 
me explicitly state the following:
The charter is the result of IETF / WG consensus.
We are thankful for all contributions. However, the aspect that an 
individual contributed to the text does in no way give him/her 
interpretation authority as to its meaning. Nor would it allow him/her 
to interpret or shift existing WG consensus, based on what he/she thinks 
or had in mind. This is the role of the WG as a whole and the WG chairs 
listening to that WG consensus. And we ask contributors to please not 
assume nor assert towards others that your opinion would supersede that 
of other members of the WG based on such history.

We will be available for further explanation in Yokohama,
However, please understand the conclusion of the WG chairs and AD on the 
existing scope as written in Roman's email before.

Thank you and best regards, Tobias (WG co-chair)

Ps.: I will reply on draft specific comments separately.

On 24/10/15 06:39, Roland Dobbins wrote:
> The 'telemetry' part was not meant to imply that the DOTS WG should 
> take on the huge task of further redefining existing telemetry 
> standards such as IPFIX as a goal in and of itself. This is a much 
> bigger job with implications far beyond the realm of threat signaling.
>
> those standards, if necessary, in order to enhance their suitability 
> for the threat signaling and the communication of threat handling 
> requests, nothing more.  The emphasis was meant to be on the 
> 'signaling' and 'threat handling' parts, not the 'telemetry' parts.
>
> Very specifically, 'signaling of DDoS related telemetry' does not 
> imply 'redefinition of DDoS related telemetry'.
>
>> We should be careful to avoid individual attempts of re-interpretations
>
> The above is not in fact a re-interpretation; as the WG participant 
> who contributed the specific verbiage in question, it is a statement 
> of the literal meaning of the verbiage in question by the individual 
> who contributed it to the DOTS WG charter.
>
> To clarify, expressed views regarding the expansion of the scope of 
> the DOTS WG beyond threat signaling are wholly unrelated to company 
> perspectives.
>
> threats-signaling and which has the potential to jeopardizes our 
> ability to focus on the completion of the DOTS WG goal of establishing 
> a standards-based mechanism within a relatively short timeframe.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dots mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dots