Subject: Continuing the story - another stab at an IETF mission statement

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 13:43:15 -0800

Apologies to those who are already tired of this debate, and those think 
that we have enough of a clear idea of what the IETF mission is, and that 
discussing more is harmful to the community, but....

I attempted to incorporate the latest discussions into an internet-draft, 
which I managed to get out just before the deadline....

   draft-alvestrand-ietf-mission-00.txt

The core of the draft:

   The goal of the IETF is to make the Internet work.

   The mission of the IETF is to produce high quality, relevant
   technical and engineering documents that influence the way people
   design, use and manage the Internet in such a way as to make the
   Internet work better.
   These documents include protocol standards, best current practices
   and informational documents of various kinds.

   The IETF will pursue this mission in adherence to the following
   cardinal principles:

   Open process - that any interested participant can in fact
      participate in the work, know what is being decided, and make his
      or her voice heard on the issue.  Part of this principle is our
      commitment to making our documents, our WG mailing lists, our
      attendance lists and our meeting minutes publicly available on the
      Net.

   Technical competence - that the issues on which the IETF produces its
      documents are issues where the IETF has the competence needed to
      speak to them, and that the IETF is willing to listen to
      technically competent input from any source.
      Technical competence also means that we expect IETF output to be
      designed to sound network engineering principles - this is also
      often referred to as "engineering quality".

   Volunteer Core - that our members and our leadership are people who
      come to the IETF because they want to work for the IETF's
      purposes.

   Rough consensus and running code - We make standards based on the
      combined engineering judgement of our participants and our real-
      world experience in implementing and deploying our specifications.

The rest of the document is trying to define the terms and explain the 
issues faced in formulating the mission statement.
An appendix (to be deleted before publication) lists some other attempts at 
formulating a mission statement - the purpose of including this is to give 
honor to those who worked on them, and to allow those who debate the issue 
to see what other attempts to formulate the mission could look like.

Comments are welcome, of course!

                      Harald

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From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 11:38:18 +0100

On 10-feb-04, at 22:43, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> I attempted to incorporate the latest discussions into an 
> internet-draft, which I managed to get out just before the 
> deadline....

>   draft-alvestrand-ietf-mission-00.txt

Good stuff.

But wouldn't it be useful to say something about the global nature of 
the internet and the IETF body of participants, and how this influences 
both the IETF's goals and the way it carries out its activities?

More specifically, the fact that the IETF exclusively uses English for 
its standards and internal processes creates a non-level participation 
field, but at the same time the use of a single, widely-spoken language 
allows for much lower costs and higher efficiency than any alternative.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 16:28:32 -0800

--On 13. februar 2004 11:38 +0100 Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> But wouldn't it be useful to say something about the global nature of the
> internet and the IETF body of participants, and how this influences both
> the IETF's goals and the way it carries out its activities?
>

Good point. At least to make the point that the IETF sees the Internet as a 
global phenomenon, and that its standards-setting therefore must be global 
too - with English chosen for its utility, not its affiliation.
Suggestions on which sections to put it in?

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 18:33:04 +0100

On 14-feb-04, at 1:28, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> Good point. At least to make the point that the IETF sees the Internet 
> as a global phenomenon, and that its standards-setting therefore must 
> be global too - with English chosen for its utility, not its 
> affiliation.

4.1 "The Scope of the Internet" seems appropriate although this deals 
with other issues. Or maybe make it a separate item under 4.