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Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 18:48:11 -0500
To: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@CR.YP.TO>
From: Don Heath <heath@isoc.org>
Subject: Re: ISOC Appeal Response - Draft
Cc: isoc-board@isoc.org
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Dear Mr. Bernstein,

The Board of Trustees of the Internet Society has received your note
of complaint regarding the Internet Standards Process, as documented
in RFC 2026.

According to Section 6.5.3 of that document, the scope of an approach
to ISOC is through a claim that the procedures described in RFC 2026
are inadequate or insufficient for the protection of the interests of
all parties involved in Internet Standards development. In essence,
a review by the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society is not a
review of the outcomes of any Internet Engineering Steering Group
(IESG) or Internet Architecture Board (IAB) investigation into a
dispute, and, accordingly, the Board of Trustees of the Internet
Society is not in a position to alter in any way the outcomes of
the actions of these bodies. Instead, the Internet Society review
is a review of the way in which the procedures described in RFC2026
were followed by the IESG and the IAB, with the sole objective of
identifying whether there are weaknesses in these procedures in terms
of the rights of all parties to a fair and open Internet Standards
development process.

Accordingly, it is the task of the Board of Trustees of the Internet
Society to review the procedures themselves, but not to review the
specific aspects of any particular dispute. It is my impression that
neither the IESG nor the IAB has undertaken to review the actions of
the working group with which you are dissatisfied. Until the IESG and
the IAB have completed their review procedures it is difficult to assess
whether the procedures that they are to follow are adequate or not.
For this reason it is appropriate to await the outcome of your
current appeal to the IESG, and, if so desired, the outcome of an
appeal to the IAB. If you are then of the opinion that the procedures
followed in the course of these reviews are flawed in the manner
described in RFC 2026, then an appeal to ISOC would be appropriate
at that juncture.

Obviously I hope and trust that your dispute can be resolved to the
satisfaction of all parties within the context of an IESG review of
this matter, or, failing that, that the IAB review can establish such
a resolution. If this does not eventuate, and there are outstanding
issues regarding the procedures used to address this dispute, the
Board of Trustees of the Internet Society will be then in a position
to review these outstanding procedural issues.

Don Heath
President/CEO
Internet Society