Subject: Requirements Development RFP for Extension to the Data Tracker

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:33:52 -0500

Requirements Development RFP for Extension to the Data Tracker

The IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC), on behalf of the  
IETF, announces this Request for Proposal to develop the requirements  
for data tracker extensions for Working Group Chairs and Internet- 
Draft Authors.  The successful bidder will enter into a contract with  
the Internet Society.

The current Data Tracker infrastructure provides support for the work  
of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), the IETF  
Secretariat, and through the ietf.org website provides information to  
the community at large.  The current tools are written in Perl and  
Python and interface with a MySQL database.

The primary goal of this project is to develop consensus on a set of  
requirements for extending the Data Tracker to capture and display the  
progression of Internet-Drafts (I-Ds) from the time they are accepted  
as candidate WG documents through to the time the WG Chair requests  
publication from the IESG, or are declared as being “Dead”, and  
provide authors, working groups, the leadership and the community the  
information needed to process, monitor and manage I-Ds.  An additional  
goal is to provide transparency to all community participants into the  
progress of IETF WGs.  One or more of this project’s deliverables may  
be used to issue an RFP for the design and development of these  
enhancements to the Data Tracker

The RFP can be found at: http://iaoc.ietf.org/rfpsrfis.html

Proposals must be received via email at [email-masked] no later  
than January 18, 2010, 5:00 P.M. EST.  All questions/inquiries must be  
submitted in writing and must be received no later than midnight, EST,  
January 7, 2010.  Responses to questions and inquiries shall be posted  
on the IAOC website, iaoc.ietf.org/rfpsrfis.html by midnight, EST,  
January 11, 2010.

The point of contact regarding this RFP is the IETF Administrative  
Director, Ray Pelletier.

Ray Pelletier
IETF Administrative Director

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:15:33 +0000

Hi Ray,

So this is to pay someone to write some I-Ds. I don't see an  
explanation as to why the usual volunteer approach wouldn't work for  
this. (But I didn't go looking beyond the rfp text, so the answer may  
be well known),

Ta,
S.

On 23 Dec 2009, at 09:33, Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]> wrote:

> IETF, announces this Request for Proposal to develop the  
> requirements for data tracker extensions for Working Group Chairs  
> and Internet-Draft Authors.  The successful bidder will enter into a  
> contract with the Internet Society.
>
> The current Data Tracker infrastructure provides support for the  
> work of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), the IETF  
> Secretariat, and through the ietf.org website provides information  
> to the community at large.  The current tools are written in Perl  
> and Python and interface with a MySQL database.
>
> requirements for extending the Data Tracker to capture and display  
> the progression of Internet-Drafts (I-Ds) from the time they are  
> accepted as candidate WG documents through to the time the WG Chair  
> requests publication from the IESG, or are declared as being  
> “Dead”, and provide authors, working groups, the leadership and  
> the community the information needed to process, monitor and manage  
> I-Ds.  An additional goal is to provide transparency to all communit 
> y participants into the progress of IETF WGs.  One or more of this p 
> roject’s deliverables may be used to issue an RFP for the design and 
>  development of these enhancements to the Data Tracker
>
> than January 18, 2010, 5:00 P.M. EST.  All questions/inquiries must  
> be submitted in writing and must be received no later than midnight,  
> EST, January 7, 2010.  Responses to questions and inquiries shall be  
> posted on the IAOC website, iaoc.ietf.org/rfpsrfis.html by midnight,  
> EST, January 11, 2010.
>

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:17:25 -0600

I took a quick look through the RFP, and suggest that other WG chairs, 
especially WG chairs who are smarter than I am, do so as well, and 
especially that we also keep an eye on 
http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-proto-wgdocument-states-00.txt (which will 
be refined as part of the RFP work).

I know that when I was scribing for the IESG, it was a consistent source of 
frustration that you couldn't figure out who actually had the token from the 
current state machine, so if a document took an additional year to produce, 
you couldn't tell whether that was an AD sending a document back to a 
working group that sat on it, or an AD sitting on the document, etc. If it 
was possible to make this less ambiguous, that would be great.

Ray/IAOC - the statement of work still explicitly excludes IDs that haven't 
been requested to be adopted by working groups yet, right? Is there any way 
to include these in the data tracker, or to otherwise make the toolset 
provide the same nice features that we get for drafts that HAVE been 
adopted, like providing HTML with links for diffs, previous versions, text 
versions, etc?

I'm asking because 
http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-proto-wgdocument-states-00.txt proposes a 
new state, "Candidate WG Document", that happens when you request that a 
document become a working group document; I'm wondering about a "Related WG 
Document" that just means the filename has "-dispatch-" or some other 
working group name, similar to the "Related IDs" on the tools version of the 
working group pages.

We aren't at all consistent about the hurdle that we put in front of working 
groups adopting individual drafts; I've seen -00 working group drafts that 
were so immature that they didn't exist as individual drafts, working group 
drafts that were so mature they were adopted and immediately forwarded for 
publication, and everything in between. That's fine (flexibility is our 
middle name), but having the individual drafts "off the radar" until they 
are requested for adoption is just losing information.

It seems to me.

Thanks,

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ray Pelletier" <[email-masked]>
To: "The IESG" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; "Working Group Chairs" 
<[email-masked]>
Cc: "IAOC" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 3:33 AM
Subject: Requirements Development RFP for Extension to the Data Tracker

Ray Pelletier
IETF Administrative Director=

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:33:56 -0500

Hi Spencer,

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Spencer Dawkins
<[email-masked]>wrote:

> ...

> We aren't at all consistent about the hurdle that we put in front of
> working groups adopting individual drafts; I've seen -00 working group
> drafts that were so immature that they didn't exist as individual drafts,
> working group drafts that were so mature they were adopted and immediately
> forwarded for publication, and everything in between. That's fine
> (flexibility is our middle name), but having the individual drafts "off the
> radar" until they are requested for adoption is just losing information.
>

My understanding is that policy as to when and by what criterion a draft
becomes a working group draft has been delegated to the working groups and
it is believed that conditions are sufficiently different in different
working groups and at different stages in the life of a working group that
this delegation is the right thing. In the absence of a working group
consensus on the matter, the decision is up to the chair(s).

> ...

Thanks,
Donald

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:06:51 -0600

Hi, Donald,

Sorry if I wasn't clear (pre-caffeine e-mail, you can only guess what that means).

Yes, I understand and agree - I'm not asking that all working groups use the same criteria for adoption. 

My point was that we only track drafts when they've been adopted, so what we track in the tracker varies because working group practices about adoption vary. For instance, I'd like to be able to easily see that there were three individual drafts that were combined into one individual draft that was revised a couple of times and then adopted. I don't think the current tracker tells you that - it certainly doesn't tell you that three individual drafts were combined into one individual draft that hasn't been adopted yet; those three individual drafts are expired and banished to the land of Google Search.

It would be helpful to know where ideas came from when I'm writing the shepherd writeup and checking to make sure all contributors are acknowledged, for example.

Expanding what drafts we track to include individual drafts would be one way - I'm sure it's not the only way, and it might not be the best way - to accomplish this.

Thanks for poking me to clarify.

Spencer

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Donald Eastlake 
  To: Spencer Dawkins 
  Cc: Working Group Chairs ; IAOC ; Ray Pelletier 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 8:33 AM
  Subject: Re: Requirements Development RFP for Extension to the Data Tracker

  Hi Spencer,

  On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]> wrote:

    ...

    We aren't at all consistent about the hurdle that we put in front of working groups adopting individual drafts; I've seen -00 working group drafts that were so immature that they didn't exist as individual drafts, working group drafts that were so mature they were adopted and immediately forwarded for publication, and everything in between. That's fine (flexibility is our middle name), but having the individual drafts "off the radar" until they are requested for adoption is just losing information.

  My understanding is that policy as to when and by what criterion a draft becomes a working group draft has been delegated to the working groups and it is believed that conditions are sufficiently different in different working groups and at different stages in the life of a working group that this delegation is the right thing. In the absence of a working group consensus on the matter, the decision is up to the chair(s).

    ...

    Thanks,

    Spencer

  Thanks,
  Donald

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 10:27:38 -0500

Spencer,

I've found that the tools pages already do a pretty good job of
picking out individual drafts aimed at a particular WG, and they even
have some of the history, such as which individual drafts have been
replaced by WG drafts, although perhaps not the complete history like
your merging example.

Cheers,
Andy

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Spencer Dawkins
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> My point was that we only track drafts when they've been adopted, so what we
> track in the tracker varies because working group practices about adoption
> vary. For instance, I'd like to be able to easily see that there were three
> individual drafts that were combined into one individual draft that was
> revised a couple of times and then adopted. I don't think the current
> tracker tells you that - it certainly doesn't tell you that three individual
> drafts were combined into one individual draft that hasn't been adopted yet;
> those three individual drafts are expired and banished to the land of Google
> Search.
>
> It would be helpful to know where ideas came from when I'm writing the
> shepherd writeup and checking to make sure all contributors are
> acknowledged, for example.
>
> Expanding what drafts we track to include individual drafts would be one way
> - I'm sure it's not the only way, and it might not be the best way - to
> accomplish this.
>

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:43:56 -0600

Hi, Andy,

I think that what you're saying is true in many cases.

My understanding is that this is built on pattern-matching the draft file 
name, so "-dispatch-" is assumed to be related to DISPATCH.

Where this falls down is in cases where

- an author doesn't include a working group name in the draft filename - 
smart ones do, but I don't know where we encourage authors to do this - OR

- a working group is closed and its work is transferred to another working 
group, so individual drafts targeted to SIP should now be targeted to 
SIPCORE, OR

- an individual draft is submitted to DISPATCH under the revised RAI 
process, and that draft is DISPATCHed to, say, MARTINI.

If your experience has been with more stable working group structures, 
you've probably avoided all of these corner cases! :-)

Thanks, and see you in Anaheim.

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
To: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Donald Eastlake" <[email-masked]>; "IAOC" <[email-masked]>; "Ray 
Pelletier" <[email-masked]>; "Working Group Chairs" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: [IAB] Requirements Development RFP for Extension to the Data 
Tracker

Spencer,

Cheers,
Andy

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Spencer Dawkins
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> Yes, I understand and agree - I'm not asking that all working groups use 
> the
> same criteria for adoption.
>

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:00:36 -0500

The I-D is the result of work by the PROTO Team many years ago 
followed by information gathering by Ed Juskevicius primarily in 
Hiroshima.  Review is actively sought.  The winner of this RFP will 
complete the requirements and specification shortly after Anihiem.

Russ

At 09:17 AM 12/23/2009, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>I took a quick look through the RFP, and suggest that other WG 
>chairs, especially WG chairs who are smarter than I am, do so as 
>well, and especially that we also keep an eye on 
>http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-proto-wgdocument-states-00.txt 
>(which will be refined as part of the RFP work).
>
>I know that when I was scribing for the IESG, it was a consistent 
>source of frustration that you couldn't figure out who actually had 
>the token from the current state machine, so if a document took an 
>additional year to produce, you couldn't tell whether that was an AD 
>sending a document back to a working group that sat on it, or an AD 
>sitting on the document, etc. If it was possible to make this less 
>ambiguous, that would be great.
>
>Ray/IAOC - the statement of work still explicitly excludes IDs that 
>haven't been requested to be adopted by working groups yet, right? 
>Is there any way to include these in the data tracker, or to 
>otherwise make the toolset provide the same nice features that we 
>get for drafts that HAVE been adopted, like providing HTML with 
>links for diffs, previous versions, text versions, etc?
>
>I'm asking because 
>http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-proto-wgdocument-states-00.txt 
>proposes a new state, "Candidate WG Document", that happens when you 
>request that a document become a working group document; I'm 
>wondering about a "Related WG Document" that just means the filename 
>has "-dispatch-" or some other working group name, similar to the 
>"Related IDs" on the tools version of the working group pages.
>
>working groups adopting individual drafts; I've seen -00 working 
>group drafts that were so immature that they didn't exist as 
>individual drafts, working group drafts that were so mature they 
>were adopted and immediately forwarded for publication, and 
>everything in between. That's fine (flexibility is our middle name), 
>but having the individual drafts "off the radar" until they are 
>requested for adoption is just losing information.
>
>It seems to me.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Spencer
>
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Pelletier" <[email-masked]>
>To: "The IESG" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; "Working Group 
>Chairs" <[email-masked]>
>publication from the IESG, or are declared as being "Dead", and
>progress of IETF WGs.  One or more of this project's deliverables may

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:38:19 -0600

Hi, Russ,

I managed to confuse Ray earlier today - what's the right place for us to 
send review comments to? I know it's not Ray :-)

Thanks,

Spencer

> The I-D is the result of work by the PROTO Team many years ago followed by 
> information gathering by Ed Juskevicius primarily in Hiroshima.  Review is 
> actively sought.  The winner of this RFP will complete the requirements 
> and specification shortly after Anihiem.
>
> Russ
>
>>http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-proto-wgdocument-states-00.txt (which 
>>will be refined as part of the RFP work).
>>
>>I know that when I was scribing for the IESG, it was a consistent source 
>>of frustration that you couldn't figure out who actually had the token 
>>from the current state machine, so if a document took an additional year 
>>to produce, you couldn't tell whether that was an AD sending a document 
>>back to a working group that sat on it, or an AD sitting on the document, 
>>etc. If it was possible to make this less ambiguous, that would be great.
>>
>>haven't been requested to be adopted by working groups yet, right? Is 
>>there any way to include these in the data tracker, or to otherwise make 
>>the toolset provide the same nice features that we get for drafts that 
>>HAVE been adopted, like providing HTML with links for diffs, previous 
>>versions, text versions, etc?
>>
>>I'm asking because 
>>http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-proto-wgdocument-states-00.txt proposes 
>>a new state, "Candidate WG Document", that happens when you request that a 
>>document become a working group document; I'm wondering about a "Related 
>>WG Document" that just means the filename has "-dispatch-" or some other 
>>working group name, similar to the "Related IDs" on the tools version of 
>>the working group pages.
>>
>>(flexibility is our middle name), but having the individual drafts "off 
>>the radar" until they are requested for adoption is just losing 
>>information.
>>
>>It seems to me.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Spencer
>>

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:02:04 -0500

Please send them to Ed.  He will pass them along with the source for 
the I-D to the winner of the RFP.

Russ

At 01:38 PM 12/23/2009, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>Hi, Russ,
>
>I managed to confuse Ray earlier today - what's the right place for 
>us to send review comments to? I know it's not Ray :-)
>
>Thanks,
>
>Spencer
>
>
>>>source of frustration that you couldn't figure out who actually 
>>>had the token from the current state machine, so if a document 
>>>took an additional year to produce, you couldn't tell whether that 
>>>was an AD sending a document back to a working group that sat on 
>>>it, or an AD sitting on the document, etc. If it was possible to 
>>>make this less ambiguous, that would be great.
>>>
>>>Ray/IAOC - the statement of work still explicitly excludes IDs 
>>>that haven't been requested to be adopted by working groups yet, 
>>>right? Is there any way to include these in the data tracker, or 
>>>to otherwise make the toolset provide the same nice features that 
>>>we get for drafts that HAVE been adopted, like providing HTML with 
>>>proposes a new state, "Candidate WG Document", that happens when 
>>>you request that a document become a working group document; I'm 
>>>wondering about a "Related WG Document" that just means the 
>>>filename has "-dispatch-" or some other working group name, 
>>>similar to the "Related IDs" on the tools version of the working group pages.
>>>
>>>We aren't at all consistent about the hurdle that we put in front 
>>>of working groups adopting individual drafts; I've seen -00 
>>>working group drafts that were so immature that they didn't exist 
>>>as individual drafts, working group drafts that were so mature 
>>>they were adopted and immediately forwarded for publication, and 
>>>everything in between. That's fine (flexibility is our middle 
>>>name), but having the individual drafts "off the radar" until they

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:01:18 -0600

Russ,

> the I-D to the winner of the RFP.

Thanks for the clue!

Spencer