Subject: "Don't fix it!"

From: "Jiwoong Lee" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:46:47 +0900

In an old article on IPJ, there was an expression that says:

"The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) motto “if it isn’t broken, don
’t fix it!” has prevented  people from redesigning Internet mail."

What. Does that imply the preference of redesign to revision in IETF ?

:<

Jiwoong

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 02:10:05 -0400

On Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:46:47 +0900, Jiwoong Lee <[email-masked]>  said:
> "The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) motto ¡°if it isn¡¯t broken, don
> ¡¯t fix it!¡± has prevented  people from redesigning Internet mail."
> 

No.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a colloquial saying meaning
"Do not embark on repairs of things that do not need repair".  It
means "Don't repair a non-broken window".  "Don't repair a working lamp".
"Don't fix software that's already working correctly".

It means that the IETF has enough sense to avoid *both* redesign and
revision until there's a demonstrable need.  Quite some time ago,
an IETF working group designed MIME and ESMTP.  At first, things were
QUITE bad, as not many software packages supporte either one.  Experience
was gained, and the MIME RFC's have gone through several iterations
(rfc 1341-1345 in June 1992, 1521-1523 in September 1993, and RFC2045-2049
in November 1996).

However, the following should be noted:

1) There were not any major changes for the second and third iterations,
mostly just clarifications and better specifications.  So the IETF
does revise when needed.  However, although there's been plenty of RFC's
since 1996 adding new subtypes (everything from multipart/related to
audio/L16), we've avoided changing the basic standards since 1996.
We don't revise unless needed.

2) There's a *huge* mass of deployed systems out there that support
ESMTP and MIME.  Any redesign will have to be *so* obviously better
that people will upgrade - and there's not been any "Killer Ap"
proposal.  There's only 3 or 4 companies that could force an upgrade - and
even with the current political party in power in the US, those
3 or 4 companies would almost certainly be hit with an anti-trust
lawsuit or backlash from users due to non-backward-compatability issues.
The IETF doesn't redesign unless needed.

Go back and look at the size of the mailing list archives from the
MIME and ESMTP working groups - we're talking *megabytes* of mail
for each.  "If it aint broke, don't fix it"  means "unless you have
a good reason, don't go to all that effort again".

If you know of something that is *NOT* doable in the current MIME/ESMTP
framework (remember - ESMTP extentions and new MIME subtypes are 
*relatively* cheap/simple), and is important enough to be worth a
redesign, feel free to bring it to the IETF's attention.

				Valdis Kletnieks
				Operating Systems Analyst
				Virginia Tech

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From: Jon Crowcroft <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 08:53:11 +0100

>>"Don't fix software that's already working correctly".

it is also understood to refer to systems so complex that often even
their creators dont understand how they work, so that people are
afraid to alter them while they appear to be working,  in case
they stop doing so.

the internet is just such a system, although i would say that e=mail
is one of the parts probably best udnerstood (not by me, but i have
met people who seem to get it:-)

cheers

jon