RFC 8715

IETF Administrative Support Activity 2.0: Update to the Process for Selection of Trustees for the IETF Trust

📅 published February 2020, from ietf

RFC 8715: IETF Administrative Support Activity 2.0: Update to the Process for Selection of Trustees for the IETF Trust 🎀

  • Written by: J. Arkko of Ericsson ✨
  • Category: Informational (published for information, not a Standards Track spec) 📚
  • Date: February 2020 📅
  • ISSN: 2070-1721
  • Obsoletes / Updates: the title block doesn't list either one 🤷‍♀️

Abstract

okay so this doc explains why RFC 8714 made the changes it did 💅. When RFC 8714 came out, the IASA 2.0 changes hit the IETF Trust hard, because the IAOC was being phased out and IAOC members had been serving as Trustees. So this doc gives background on how the Trust used to work, explains what the founding-document rules meant during the transition, and gives the reasoning behind the update 🧠✨.

Status of This Memo

this one is not an Internet Standards Track spec. It's just published for info 🌸.

It's an IETF product and it reflects the community's consensus 🫶. It got public review and the IESG approved it for publication. Not every IESG-approved doc is a candidate for any level of Internet Standard, so check Section 2 of RFC 7841 if you're curious 🤓.

For the current status, errata, and how to send feedback, go to https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8715 🔗.

Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved 💜.

This doc is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) as they stand on the publication date. Please actually read these, bestie, they spell out your rights and restrictions 📜. Code Components pulled from this doc have to include the Simplified BSD License text described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions, and they come with no warranty, as the Simplified BSD License says 🎀.

Table of Contents

1.  Introduction
2.  Background
3.  General Approach
4.  Changing the Way Trustees Are Selected
5.  Transition
6.  Security Considerations
7.  IANA Considerations
8.  References
  8.1.  Normative References
  8.2.  Informative References
Acknowledgements
Author's Address

1. Introduction ✨

so this doc is the rationale behind the changes in [RFC8714] 🦋.

When [RFC8714] came out, the IASA 2.0 changes affected the IETF Trust [RFC4071] [RFC4371] [RFC8711]. The reason is that IAOC members, whose committee was being phased out, had been serving as Trustees 😭. [RFC8714] makes one minimal change to how Trustees get selected 🌈.

This companion memo covers the details of how the Trust was set up before, explains how the founding-document rules played out during the transition, and gives the rationale for the update 💖.

2. Background 🧚

The IETF Trust exists to acquire, hold, maintain, and license certain existing and future intellectual property and other property used in running the IETF [RFC8714] 💅. The IP is things like the rights IETF contributors grant for text in RFCs and Internet-Drafts. The Trust also manages trademarks like "IETF" and domain names like "ietf.org". And it serves the wider Internet community by holding domains and trademarks tied to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [RFC7979] 🌍.

The IETF Trust is a legal entity registered in the Commonwealth of Virginia [Trust-FD] 🏛️.

Before, IAOC members were also ex officio Trustees. The founding documents say that anyone eligible to be a Trustee has to be a current IAOC member [Trust-FD]. They also say that if there are fewer than three people serving as Trustees, the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), or whoever succeeds the IESG as IETF leadership, shall appoint one or more individuals to serve temporarily as Trustee(s) until eligible people can be found 🙈.

The old IAOC had eight voting members. Two came from the IETF Nominating Committee (NomCom), one from the IESG, one from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and one from the Internet Society (ISOC) Board of Trustees. Three were ex officio: the IETF Chair, the ISOC CEO, and the IAB Chair. On top of that, the IETF Administrative Director (IAD) was a non-voting IAOC member who also served as a Trustee 👀.

3. General Approach 🦋

There were two main ways to handle the Trustee problem once the IAOC was gone. The first was to fold all the IETF Trust functions into the new IASA structure and the new legal entity. But this memo pushes for the second option, where the IETF Trust stays independent 🎀.

Why? Partly to keep changes to the Trust small while the IETF's admin structure was going through a big overhaul 🧹. Also, the Trust and the other IETF admin processes are pretty different. The Trust is very important, sure, but it's a low-activity entity where changes are minimal and gradual, and nothing urgent is going on 😌.

4. Changing the Way Trustees Are Selected 💅

When Trustees were serving on both the IETF Trust and the IAOC, a lot of the rules for naming them came from what the IAOC needed. For the Trust in the new model, some of those arrangements got rethought, both the number and source of Trustees and the qualifications and term lengths 🔄.

There were lots of options, obviously. A brand-new selection process could have been designed. But this doc argues for limited change, mostly because a) the IETF Trust arrangements had been working pretty well, b) the expected time commitment is modest, and c) the assets need very careful management 🔐.

So a smaller group of Trustees looked like enough ✨.

Also, Trustees picked from the IETF community could have longer terms than the two-year period typical of other IETF bodies 📆.

People could have kept the practice of making the IETF, IAB, and Internet Society chairs and CEOs Trustees too, but that might not be needed. The Trust's tasks are well defined, and while coordination matters, it doesn't have to happen at chair or CEO level 🤷‍♀️.

So one approach was to have Trustees appointed by the NomCom, the IESG, and the ISOC Board of Trustees 🎯. (The IETF Administration LLC legal entity could have been considered instead of the Internet Society for this role. But the Internet Society is probably the better fit, since it cares about broad use of the Trust assets and not just the admin side 🌸.)

If the same principles from previous appointments kept being used, then NomCom appointments would need confirmation from another entity. That could be the IESG or the IAB, for example. The IESG used to confirm IAOC appointments, so it was kept in that role for Trustees 👑.

5. Transition 🌈

When the IETF Administration LLC was set up, the IAOC was expected to be shut down soon after. Luckily, nothing forced all the IAOC parts and their dependent orgs to change at once 🙌. As Section 2 covers, the IESG can still keep naming Trustees. Once the updated procedures were in place, the IETF Trust got its management nominated the usual way, and the IESG's exception process wasn't needed anymore 🎉.

6. Security Considerations 🔐

This memo has no security implications for the Internet. Nothing to panic about here 😌✨.

7. IANA Considerations 🧚

This document has no IANA actions 💖.

8. References 📚

8.1. Normative References

8.2. Informative References

Acknowledgements 🫶

The author wants to thank the other members of the earlier IASA 2.0 design team: Brian Haberman, Eric Rescorla, Jason Livingood, Joe Hall, and Leslie Daigle 💜. The author also wants to thank Alissa Cooper, Ted Hardie, Andrew Sullivan, Brian Carpenter, Lucy Lynch, and John Levine for interesting chats in this problem space, and Adrian Farrel, Tero Kivinen, Russ Housley, Benjamin Kaduk, Adam Roach, and Meral Shirazipour for careful review 🌟.

Author's Address 🖊️

Jari Arkko
Ericsson
FI-02700 Kauniainen
Finland

Email: jari.arkko@piuha.net
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