Subject: RE: Milestones

From: "Presuhn, Randy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 16:44:52 -0600

Hi -

> From: Wijnen, Bert (Bert) [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 13:31
> To: Presuhn, Randy; [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: Milestones
> 
> 
> > ...
> > > AS far as I can tell, all the time I have been an AD, the
> > > milestones have never been used to kill/close a WG if they
> > > missed their milestones even by years. So I think out culture
> > > is not used to it. If we all want it, we can change that,
> > ...
> > 
> > Missing milestones has been used in the distant past to
> > terminate WGs.  Remember the SNMPv2 and chassis MIB efforts.
> > 
> I think the case of SNMPv2 was more that there was nbo outlook that
> the WG would actually make any progress. And that is is why it got
> shut down.
> 
> Bert (that is how I perceived it)

My perceptions were very different, but they're not germane to this
discussion.  The point of my observation was simply that there was
a time when at least one AD was fairly aggressive about using the
charter dates as a factor in WG termination decisions.  The two
examples I cited were simply handy examples that many would recall,
though I think they also illustrate just how different the level of
community support (both at the time and in retrospect) for such
tough decisions can be.

In times like these,
we need to be especially careful what we ask for.

It's nice to be able to use the threat of a deadline to focus
attention and get companies to free up resources to work on
items.  If the threat of cancellation doesn't make biomips
available, one has to question how serious the support for the
work item was in the first place.  HOWEVER, I fully agree that
sometimes things turn out to be much harder than was initially
expected, and would also observe that sometimes the cry of
"rathole" may be premature.

 ------------------------------------------------------
 Randy Presuhn          BMC Software, Inc.  1-3141
 [email-masked]  2141 North First Street
 Tel: +1 408 546-1006   San José, California 95131  USA
 ------------------------------------------------------
 My opinions and BMC's are independent variables.
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