Subject: RE: [Ieprep] representation & IETF culture

From: "Gunn, Janet" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 14:37:55 -0500

And similar "stupid requirements" NEVER happen in the commercial world?

In my experience there is as much narrow focused "missing the point" in the
commercial world as in the government sector.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Woodcock [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 2:20 PM
To: Rex Buddenberg
Cc: RJ Atkinson; Steve Silverman; 'ieprep '
Subject: Re: [Ieprep] representation & IETF culture

      On 15 Nov 2002, Rex Buddenberg wrote:
    > > "Requirement" means something compulsory, requisite, necessary,
compelled.
    > > Not someone else's passing whim.
    > Not in the government, Bill.

No, in the English lanugage, which is our one hope for bridging this gap.
If we don't share a common language, I'm hard-pressed to imagine a way of
discovering commonalities of understanding and belief.

A little REQUISITE reading for anyone who doesn't believe this is a
really serious problem:
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=74999286

...and then Rex went on to say about three more pages about the process
of scientific inquiry which I agreed with.

                                -Bill

_______________________________________________
Ieprep mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ieprep
_______________________________________________
Ieprep mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ieprep

---

From: Bill Woodcock <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 12:09:17 -0800 (PST)

> And similar "stupid requirements" NEVER happen in the commercial world?

The "two wrongs make a right" argument is orthoganal to the question of
whether we should let the very, very valuable time of the IETF be used as
a rubber-stamping mechanism for one customer's procurement process with
vendors they're already working with.

                                -Bill

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 21:15:11 -0500

> And similar "stupid requirements" NEVER happen in the commercial world?

Commercial customers of ISPs normally open their approach by asking
the ISPs to give them a quote for the specified service, not by asking
the IETF to create an anomalous WG that they can use to herd 
service/equipment
vendors.

Normally, (A) commercial customers tell equipment vendors that they 
will purchase
X million dollars of stuff if the vendor implements foo.  The vendor 
figures out
the cost (including opportunity cost) of implementing foo, compares 
with revenue
and ROI needs, then decides whether to implement foo for the customer.

Normally, (B) commercial customers tell ISPs that they want to purchase 
the
foo service and ask what price it is available at.  The ISP then decides
whether they want to offer foo (or not) and provides a quote (iff they
decide to offer foo).  @Home declined to offer a lot of the services 
that
we were asked to provide, normally because the opportunity cost was too 
high.

In the government sector, it is not unheard of to use (A).  Once upon a 
time,
DIA edited together a spec for a "Compartmented Mode Workstation" and 
told
workstation vendors that they wanted to by <very large quantity> of them
and put out an RFP.  Vendors did the math and some implemented to the 
spec.
A subset of those sold their CMW products to the government.

It is also not unheard of to use (B).  For example, DISA currently has 
an
RFI out on the street for long-haul fibre.  Usually, a government RFI
is followed up by a government RFP.

So, frankly, I'm pretty confused about why DISA/NCS isn't taking the 
commercial
contracting approaches outlined above.  I think it would be a lot more 
successful.
And it would let us shutdown this very strange and very painful WG.

> commercial world as in the government sector.

The profit motive turns out to be a highly effective mechanism in 
helping
the commercial sector re-focus itself naturally.  That mechanism is 
necessarily
absent from the government.

Ran

---

From: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 21:28:20 -0500 (EST)

> absent from the government.

but, as you point out,  not from vendors to the government 

Scott