Subject: Re: How many standards or protocols...

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 07:34:41 +0200

--On 15. april 2002 19:55 -0700 todd glassey 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> Harald - what is the IETF's policy on this question.
>
> How many of any one protocol will the IETF allow to be push through to
> standard. And the IESG? Is it that there is only one standard for each
> type of protocol or what?
> This is an official resuest,

Since this is an official request asking for what the IETF will allow, I 
think it is best to ask the IETF community. Thus the CC to [email-masked].

The obvious (but meaningless) answer is "as many as needed".

Speaking for myself, I think it would be foolish of the IETF to create a 
hard rule about this question - the circumstances may differ a lot.
Consider a few "multiple protocol" scenarios the IETF has faced recently.

- In the IPNG discussions, we decided to pursue IPv6 only.
- In the SNMP vs CMOT discussions, we decided to pursue two approaches.
  One died, the other remains.
- In the OSPF vs IS-IS discussions, we decided to pursue two approaches.
  Both survive, with little apparent harm to the community.
- In the SNMPv2 discussions, we decided to pursue one, then to pursue
  multiple and "let the market decide", and then to pursue one again.
- In the case of CR-LDP vs RSVP-TE, we seem to be pursuing two.
  One seems to be winning, but the market has not decided yet.
- In the PGP vs S/MIME discussions, we decided to pursue two, arguing
  that they have different fields of applicability. Both survive so
  far, but neither has become ubiquitous.

When we pursue multiple approaches, there is one very hard question - which 
is when we take the decision to drop the pursuit of one approach.
Sooner or later the answer is usually obvious. But the cost of pursuit is 
substantial; it would often be advantageous to concentrate on one as soon 
as one is clearly superior to the others.

I'd like to hear the IETF community's input on the topic.

                    Harald

PS: The mail being responded to was addressed to the chair of the IETF in 
his IETF role, and is thus a "contribution" under the terms of the NOTE 
WELL statement you've all seen.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:41:57 +0200

We'd be very foolish to have a "policy" on this. It all depends on the 
particular case, and sometimes it's better to let Darwinian selection
make the choice. Sometimes (as for IPvN) it is clearly required to 
make a choice in advance.

This is not an official answer.

   Brian

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 09:43:27 -0400

My personal opinions on the matter of "when should we allow multiple 
protocols for the same thing" are roughly:
1) No hard and fast rule will work.  This is something the relevant ADs, 
and sometimes the whole IESG, must judge.
2) It is reasonable to allow two (or even more) protocols when they have 
clear and distinct areas of applicability.  Thus, while I may technically 
like a routing solution that applies to intra and inter domain, it is quite 
reasonable from a standardization perspective to have two different 
protocols for the two spaces.
3) History is relevant.  We frequently get solutions evolving independently 
that turn out to have significant overlap.  It requires significant care to 
determinewhat should be used, when, and how.  Often, this will require 
allowing more than one standard for a time while we determine what works, 
is technically complete, ...

In general, multiple protocols for the exact same thing are a bad 
idea.  Translating that into practice is complicated.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

At 07:34 AM 4/16/2002 +0200, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

>When we pursue multiple approaches, there is one very hard question - 
>which is when we take the decision to drop the pursuit of one approach.

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 07:46:40 -0700

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
To: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 10:34 PM
Subject: Re: How many standards or protocols...

> The obvious (but meaningless) answer is "as many as needed".

then who makes that decision? You or the WG Chairs? The AD's???

> Consider a few "multiple protocol" scenarios the IETF has faced recently.

I agree personally.

> - In the IPNG discussions, we decided to pursue IPv6 only.

but if someone wanted to, would you have allowed them to persue a IPv4
variant?

>   One died, the other remains.

Yes - Funny how the commercial industry is about that!.

>   Both survive, with little apparent harm to the community.

And they both offer cricital boundry routhing capabilities - and most Router
manufacturers support both protocols as far as I can tell.

> When we pursue multiple approaches, there is one very hard question -
which
> is when we take the decision to drop the pursuit of one approach.

But why is the question? If there are people actively working on the effort
and they want to continue, why is the management making any decisions as to
which protocols to push?

> substantial;

> it would often be advantageous to concentrate on one as soon

The cost of persuits is not borne by the IETF though so what's the point?
Why should the WG constrain any effort over another? This is a curiosity of
mine, that being why a WG should have squat to say at the management level
about the content of its protocols, only whether they are completed and
elevated to the next level or not. This is the core flaw in the IETF's
process. The WG Chairs need an arms length from each of the protocol efforts
and to act as mentors for all the projects that have committed participants.
They are not the ones to decide what the WG will and will not focus on, its
membership is.

As to the actual content and form of the protocols themselves,  the content
and form is up to the contributors and those actively involved in the
vetting process. So I would like to pose the question "why then should any
WG Management have anything to say about which protocols are done in their
groups?".

Several have said to me that they need this ability to drive focus into the
group. The problem is that there is no formal definition as to what that
focus is. Also it needs to be stated that WG participants are not labor
sources for the WG Chair to allocate, they are participants and are all
equal before the IESG - or should be at least.

> I'd like to hear the IETF community's input on the topic.

Me too!.

> WELL statement you've all seen.

Thanks Harald for the immediate response.

Todd Glassey

---

From: "James Seng" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 00:20:31 +0800

> then who makes that decision? You or the WG Chairs? The AD's???

The IETF as a community, depending on rough consensus. If the rough
consensus is that there will be multiple protocols, then then there will be.
If not, then not.

Rough also means not everyone will agree with the decision.

> and they want to continue, why is the management making any decisions as
to

There must be sufficient support for the effort and that must be rough
consensus. People activiely (solo or team) working is not enough.

> They are not the ones to decide what the WG will and will not focus on,
its

In an ideal situation, the wg chairs would make decision based on what he
determined as a rough consensus of the working group. It is typical that a
handful of people will disagreed with the decision anyway but a loud voice
doesn't mean you'll get your way.

But if there are sufficient people who disagreed with the decision of the
chairs, then the chairs have failed to determine the rough consensus. That
decision will be overturned.

It does not matter what the contributions the working group chairs made,
what protocol they supports, what they thinks or what they eat last week *as
long* as the final decision represent a rough consensus of the group.

If you think the wg chairs should be arms length and "mentoring role", you
should be looking elsewhere, not IETF.

> WG Management have anything to say about which protocols are done in their

Why not? Does been a wg chairs means he/she have to stop been a contributor?

> focus is.

Check your working group charter.

> Also it needs to be stated that WG participants are not labor

I think that is why the wg chairs are paid big bucks by the IETF ;-)

Big bucks as in a *BIG* zero with all-expenses-on-your-own deal.

> > I'd like to hear the IETF community's input on the topic.

I think you should try to keep your disagree with the chairs within your own
working group. Also look into RFC2026 on the appealing process.

-James Seng

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:07:52 -0400

> manufacturers support both protocols as far as I can tell.

Note well that IS-IS is *not* an IETF standard.  It is an ISO standard.
The IETF IS-IS WG only generates Informational RFCs which are formally
just contributions to the ISO IS-IS standards group.  ISO retains change
control over the IS-IS protocol standards.

The IETF picked OSPF.  Certain vendors pushed IS-IS onto large ISP 
customers,
during the mid-90s, in part to give themselves a proprietary advantage
(at the time only 1 or 2 vendors had a solid IS-IS implementation).
Over time, other vendors desiring to compete in the ISP market segment
shipped IS-IS in addition to OSPF.  Quality of implementation of IS-IS
remains highly variable today, IMHO.

> and they want to continue, why is the management making any decisions 

Interoperability would be one good answer.  Having a consistent
Internet Architecture is another.  Other reasons also exist.

> The cost of persuits is not borne by the IETF though so what's the 

Disagree.  Cost of having any WG is actually pretty high for the IETF.
It is pretty strongly desirable to minimise the number of active WGs,
IMHO, for reasons of the operational load.  That said, I think much
of the community expects decisions to be made to pick one approach
over another approach when the two overlap a great deal.

And number me among those who think that there ought not be a hard
and fast rule on this topic.  Instead, local circumstances should be
a major factor in deciding whether to permit competing efforts to
exist within the IETF.  (Of course vendor consortia could be created
to take on stuff the IETF chooses not to take on.)

I don't plan to get into an extended dialogue about this, so I plan
not to respond to followup postings.

Ran
[email-masked]

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 10:01:04 -0700

The problem James is that this is just not the case. What is the case is
that each WG Chair gets to decide what concensus is for their WG and that is
wrong. The problem with the operations is that the rules change form group
to group and this has serious technical and financial implications for
anyone trying to mount a standards effort as part of a product release or
market development activity.

Todd

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Seng" <[email-masked]>
To: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>; "Harald Tveit
Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2002 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: How many standards or protocols...

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 02:23:55 +0900

> customers, during the mid-90s, in part to give themselves a proprietary
> advantage (at the time only 1 or 2 vendors had a solid IS-IS
> implementation).

puhleeze!  is-is worked at scale.  ospf did not.  heck, when most
large isps were starting (late '80s and early '90s), ospf barely
worked at all.

and perhaps one should not accuse a company of a "proprietary"
advantage for implementing a well-known standardized protocol.

but it sure is cheering to see that old wars and old warriors are
not dead.

randy

---

From: james woodyatt <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 11:06:35 -0700

On Monday, April 15, 2002, at 10:34 PM, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
> [...] I'd like to hear the IETF community's input on the topic. [...]

This is a matter of politics, philosophy and economics (PPE).  Asking 
engineers to comment on such things is nice-- we're so often left out of 
such discussions.

Here's what I think: asking this question is like asking, "how many 
units of currency and instruments of payment does the world need?"  The 
answer depends on your theories of PPE.

If I could measure the "sovereignty" of the IETF as a political 
organization, I'd say it's a function of 1) the value of the networks 
defined by the standard protocols it has produced to the present, and 2) 
the forecasted increase in value derived from the standards the world 
expects it will produce in the future.

> The obvious (but meaningless) answer is "as many as needed".

Please allow me to speculate that what the Chair meant to say was "as 
many or as few as will serve to optimize the present and future value of 
the Internet."

The more interesting question is whether the IETF process is well suited 
to finding the right number of standards or protocols for any given 
purpose.  On *that* subject, I will demure to wiser and older hands than 
myself.  For now, anyway.

--
j h woodyatt <[email-masked]>

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 14:22:41 -0400

> large isps were starting (late '80s and early '90s), ospf barely

Randy,

	Your statement is true for at least one vendor's OSPF, but clearly
not true for several other vendors' OSPF (e.g. John Moy's).  The 
well-known
OSPF issues with the one vendor were with the original coder (name 
omitted)
of their OSPF, not with the OSPF spec.  That vendor's implementation
also got a fair bit better over time.  I got to learn the history (and
their motivation) while working at that vendor as a coder.

	I also worked in network engineering for a very large (multi-continent)
ISP that ran OSPF, not IS-IS.  It worked fine.  I know of other 
similarly large
ISPs that work fine on OSPF.  Claims that OSPF doesn't scale are provably
false by several existence proofs.

> advantage for implementing a well-known standardized protocol.

	IS-IS as deployed in the global Internet is not quite what
is in the ISO standards nor RFC-1195, sad to say.  Over time, the
de facto IS-IS specs might get more fully published -- certainly
they are more published now than several years ago.  But even today,
there is a bunch of stuff that's widely deployed yet not in any
ISO spec or any RFC.

	This contrasts rather sharply with the state of OSPF documentation
and standardisation.

	Note that none of your pushback contradicted my main claim,
which is that IS-IS is not an *IETF* standard of any sort.  Examination
of any accurate rfc-index.txt will confirm this.

Ran
[email-masked]

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 14:24:48 -0400

On Tuesday, April 16, 2002, at 01:01 , todd glassey wrote:

> wrong.

It is the role of the WG chair(s) to determine rough consensus.  If one
disagrees, there is a well-documented appeal process.  Consensus 
necessarily
is sometimes more rough than other times.

I'm quite happy with the way it is.  And by the way, the IETF doesn't
recognise organisational members, just individuals.  And I like that
aspect as well.

Clearly your mileage varies.

Ran

---

From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 14:29:01 -0400

There is also a "speed of convergence" issue: For a new area with little
operational experience, one might want to eventually have one solution,
but there is no technical way to objectively arrive at a single answer,
given the set of participants and knowledge available, as the weight of
the engineering trade-offs can't be established objectively. In that
case, there are three choices:

(1) decide arbitrarily by fiat; given limited information, the choice
may well turn out to be wrong and may well add a lot of process overhead
if the losing party is sufficiently aggrieved.

(2) have a fight to the death in the WG, until one side or the other is
exhausted. Again, not necessarily likely to correspond to technical
merit, but sure to delay things, meaning that users are deprived of any
standard solution, meaning that a proprietary, possibly inferior to
both, solution "wins" by default. Given that external parties may well
desire such an outcome, it is easy to have them game the system by
providing ammunition to both combatants.

(3) Let multiple efforts proceed, but establish as much commonality as
you can, in terms of data formats, security mechanisms, terminology or
whatever else can be agreed upon. During the process of actually working
out the details, one or more solutions may find that they are converging
naturally or that the differences are a matter of taste.

IMPP went roughly through (2) and (3). I'm not claiming that the
particular process and duration spend in state (2) and (3) are role
models.

---

From: "James Seng" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 02:38:41 +0800

> that each WG Chair gets to decide what concensus is for their WG and that
is

I dont see whats wrong with each wg chairs determine what is the consensus.
(Note: I use the word "determine" not "decide"). In fact, that is part of
the job description for a wg chair.

> The problem with the operations is that the rules change form group

Product release and market development activity are out-of-scope for IETF.

If the working group considered them as a factor, then it is up to the
*group* to decide. The chairs dont play a role here other then declaring
what the rough consensus is, regardless what that decision is.

I have a feeling you should be looking at some other industry consortium
instead.

-James Seng

> > > and they want to continue, why is the management making any decisions
as
> > > Why should the WG constrain any effort over another? This is a
curiosity
> > of
> > > They are not the ones to decide what the WG will and will not focus
on,
> > > Several have said to me that they need this ability to drive focus
into
> > the

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 15:53:54 -0400

> I'd like to hear the IETF community's input on the topic.

IMHO: IETF has limited resources, and as such, it cannot investigate 
every solution that someone might propose for every problem that 
exists or is thought to exist on the Internet.  IETF leadership
has to choose where to invest those resources.  Such choices
are significantly informed by the expressed interests of IETF 
participants.   

In short, IETF works on what its participants want to work on.  
It cannot effectively work on a proposal that has little or no
support from its participants.

We try to be reasonably open to new proposals from anywhere, as long as 
there are people to work on them, and we hope that this makes it easy
for people with really good ideas to develop/standardize them in the IETF.
But there's always a chance that IETF might miss a useful solution 
to some problem because that solution originates from outside of IETF. 
There's nothing that IETF can do about that situation.  The fact that this 
situation exists can even be useful for IETF - it can help IETF retain a 
sense of humility that makes it easier for IETF participants to accurately 
judge the value of technical contributions.  (though of course we do still 
make mistakes!)

Similarly, there will always be people who feel that they've somehow
been shafted by IETF.  But nothing stops those people from taking
their proposals to other standards bodies, from starting their own
advocacy groups for those proposals, or from trying to get vendors to 
implement their propsals without the imprimatur of a standards body.
All of these strategies are successfully employed on a regular basis.

But neither do such people have the rights to demand support from IETF -
that would be tantamount to putting words in the mouths of IETF 
participants - forcing them to lie about their technical assessments
and where their interests are.

Folks who think that IETF has screwed them because it didn't support
their proposal have the burden of demonstrating both that their proposals
are technically sounder than any other proposals that were supported;
and that that there was a significant constituency who was willing to 
do the work on their proposal, in IETF, and under IETF rules.  If they 
can't do that, they are wasting our time and theirs, and they should go 
elsewhere.

Keith

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:39:33 -0700

Ran you jhit it on the head - "Your milages varies..." - this is a standards
organization and not a place where we decide who we like and which of their
projects we are going to allow to come through us today and not.

That's not the way any other GLOBAL standards orgs work. It is however how
all of the privatized reccomendation services work, and the problem here is
that you have hit the needle on the head. The IETF is not a fair and
equitible playing field by your very commentary.

Todd

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 18:58:37 -0400

On Tuesday, April 16, 2002, at 04:39 , todd glassey wrote:

> Ran you hit it on the head - "Your milages varies..." - this is a 
> standards

	It is exactly how most standards organisations work.

> That's not the way any other GLOBAL standards orgs work.

	Not so.

	Counter-examples to that claim include ISO, ITU-T, and IEEE --
each of which make decisions all the time about what proposals
and standards they want to work on or don't want to work on.
For example, to undertake standards work in IEEE, one must
(among other things) get the cognizant committee to approve
a Project Authorisation Request (PAR).  PARs get denied, approved,
and revoked regularly by IEEE throughout each year.

> It is however how

	Please don't put words into my mouth.  That is not at all what I said.
I merely said that you disagreed -- which is your perogative (whether or 
not
one's viewpoint is right, one can state a viewpoint in a free society).
Just because you have an opinion that you don't like IETF doesn't make
your claims true.

	I think the IETF is quite fair and equitable --
nota bene: that doesn't mean that each person will like each decision,
but neither does each person participating in (IEEE, ITU-T, ISO) like 
each
decision that gets made there.  And in each case, the standards 
organisation
has an appeal process to handle situations where one has a legitimate
issue about how the process was implemented.

	I've also participated in IEEE work, particularly POSIX-related 
matters.
It has slightly different practices than IETF, but decisions on what will
be undertaken or not undertaken, on what will be in the standard or not,
and so forth, occur all the time in IEEE SA.  Sometimes I agreed with 
those
decisions, other times not.

	You would be more credible if you'd put your particular specific 
detailed
issue on the table, rather than being coy about what decision got made 
that
you didn't like.  And you'd be more credible if you took any valid basis 
for
appeal through the system -- rather than taking toy potshots from a 
mailing
list -- all IMHO.

Ran

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 21:02:08 -0700

Actually James you have to a big extent hit the cause of the problem on the
head. The IETF is still predominantly Engineering Staffers and the Internet
has evolved to a point where it now needs Commercial input too.  The lack of
commercial input into the IETF is clearly a statement of the IETF's concern
about being told what it can and can't develop... and to date the IETF has
long survived by saying "We know better, we are the technical gurus". But
this is inaccurate and a smokescreen these
days.

My example of the IETF's warranting commercial involvement is a simple
statement in that there are essentially two types of protocols that are
being
developed in this forum these days that are outside the realm of new
developments like Wireless and new physical backbone protocols. The first
protocol types are additions and evolutions to existing routing and service
protocols, and for these efforts the current status and form of the IETF is
still adequate although it lacks documentation to validate their actions.
Still, it's probably OK for the existing IETF to manage these.

The other side of the coin is different though. These are End-User Protocols
and now more than ever these need to be governed or certified by commercial
acceptance... before they get to the point of being a proposed standard.

The problem as I see it is that the Engineer (or child) in us is frightened
by this, since traditionally the commercial folks (the adults) have driven
home that no matter how cool our inventions (or toys) are, there may in
fact be no commercial use for them... and they, in the interest of Business,
killed them (our toys) as such. What that meant is that the solutions we
had created were either too difficult to implement or not cost effective
relative to what they produced as a commercial service set ...
In other words, those efforts failed to meet the essential real world
practicality
standard. So in response to having our hands slapped,  we as inventors and
engineers have shied away from a world where we would be called upon to
justify what we are up to. In other words, be held to the same
accountability standards that any other organizations (public or private)
are held to.  We also see there is a way by creating these standards that we
can have power in the mortal's world as well. And acceptance as really
"special" geeks.  That's why a lot of the IETF is operating the way it is
now. Or at least that's my take on it.

To further this a bit, I also want to say we are at a point I think, where
this does not fly anymore.  It's too complex to keep the boilerplate out of
the way; & the impact is much greater now. Because of these factors
it is time the IETF and IESG woke up and smelled the coffee as well as
to not only acknowledge but function with these realities in mind.
The bottom line is that it's time for the ISOC family of
organizations to become culpable for their actions and to put in place a
level playing field for all.

----

The current problem the world faces is that an Internet Standard is
potentially worth billions of dollars. (see local exchange rates for details
on the
value in your own currency) and this now is a serious issue. It taints
everything
that the IETF does and participates in.

And so in closing this rant I think its time to acknowledge that we need to
evolve a more formal and more user-participatory method of managing the ISOC
organizations.  If the bodies are not there, then we need to recognize
that it's because we have failed in making this something that the average
participant could understand and work with, and that's our shortcoming, not
the rest of the world's.

Todd Glassey

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 23:15:22 -0700

Harald - this is indicitive of the higher level problem with how things are
run today -
I would propose that the IETF needs to embrace a variant of the SNMP
solution that you have listed below. That the IETF allow as many protocols
to be worked on that are correctly filed and meet the filing criteria for
I-D's or RFC's.

It is not the IETF's management team's place to make any decisions as to
which end-user protocols are adopted and pressed forward, and its time this
issue was resolved to create a level playing field for all concerned.

More inline below -

Todd Glassey

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
To: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 10:34 PM
Subject: Re: How many standards or protocols...

> hard rule about this question - the circumstances may differ a lot.

I dont think the IETF can have soft rules - they are too easily abused by
individuals. The whole idea behind running this as an open standards
organization is that it is supposed to offer the exact same opportunity for
all and by your response you have painted the IETF management as a group
actively involved in a conspiracy to determine who's protocols are advanced
and who's are not.

If that's true then its patently insane IMHO since I believe that it clearly
opens the IETF to litigation.

which

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 12:01:58 -0400

> this is inaccurate and a smokescreen these

You can be as great a salesman as you want, but you still can't design
a stable feedback loop that responds in less than 2*RTT across the system.

You don't let salespeople design bridges or cars or toasters either.

There's nothing wrong with a salesperson saying "It would be really great if
there were a protocol that let people do XYZ easily".  But unless they actually
know something about protocol design, they shouldn't design it.

> acceptance... before they get to the point of being a proposed standard.

OK.. So it should suceed in the marketplace, and *THEN* be standardized?

1) Once it's a success, why should the company turn over change control?
Sure, Sun did it for NFS, but that was many years ago, and many people were
surprised that they did so.  Do you see any good reason why Sun would do
that with Java, or Microsoft do it with their .NET stuff?

2) The time for there to be a *full* review of a protocol for things like
scaling and security issues is *BEFORE* it gets widely deployed.  Go look
at WEP or Microsoft's first version of a point-to-point solution.

> killed them (our toys) as such. What that meant is that the solutions we

RFC2026, section 4.2.4.

-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech

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From: "James Seng" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 00:09:01 +0800

Todd,

If you want anything done, you learn how things are done in the first place.

When I participate in ISO/IEC meetings, I follows the principle of ISO/IEC.
Standard progress are rigid but it does get things done systemically. And
when I participate in IETF, I follows the principle of IETF - rough
consensus and running codes.

Each organisation will do what it always do. I dont expect ISO/IEC to be
like IETF nor the reverse.

No one is denying the existence of commerical interest, and many of us here
have vary degree of that. But if IETF wish to consider that as a factor, it
always could - thru rough consensus. If the rough consensus conclude that
commerical interest is an important factor for that work/protocol, then it
is. If not, then not.

Your failure to convience the rest that your commerical interest is of
importance to the rest of the Internet is not a failure of the IETF. It is
your failure to gather rough consensus.

IETF has never been a rubber stamping authority for commerical interest -- I
hope it never will be. But if that is your goal for having a revolution,
then I suggest you try to find some other organisation to do that for you.
In fact, there are many organisation out there willingly eager to do so.

ps: "Level playing ground" seem to be a favourite phrase of yours. Note that
"level playing ground" is actually a by-product of having open standard, not
the goal.

-James Seng

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From: james woodyatt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 14:17:52 -0700

todd, and fellow ietf participants--

I don't want to eat too much bandwidth on the IETF Discussion list, so 
this followup will be my last contribution on the subject.  I considered 
not posting anything at all, but I feel motivated to clarify my views.

On Wednesday, April 17, 2002, at 09:02 PM, todd glassey wrote:
>
> [...] The IETF is still predominantly Engineering Staffers and the 
> Internet
> has evolved to a point where it now needs Commercial input too.  [...]

I see no problem whatsoever in the fact that an organization called the 
Internet Engineering Task Force is primarily composed of individual 
engineers.  At the risk of sounding either like a reactionary or a 
counter-revolutionary (you pick), I'll step forward to say that an 
engineer with no commercial interests is like a politician with no 
constituency.  In other words: a monster raving looney.

It's true we might have a few bourgeois dilettantes who participate in 
IETF work without pursuing any commercial interests in doing so, but so 
what?  If they can help out, we can use them.  The rest of us all have 
employment contracts to fulfill or businesses to run, and we have a keen 
understanding that our commercial purposes drive the work we do.

You got a problem with that?

> [...] The problem as I see it is that the Engineer (or child) in us is 
> frightened by this, since traditionally the commercial folks (the 
> adults) have driven home that [...]

This sentence made it very difficult for me to continue reading.  It 
doesn't seem like you know what the word 'engineering' means.  There are 
many fine dictionaries available on the web... hint hint.

> [...] The current problem the world faces is that an Internet Standard 
> is
> on the value in your own currency) and this now is a serious issue. It 
> taints
> everything that the IETF does and participates in. [...]

The logic you employed to reach this conclusion completely evades me.