Subject: RE: accusations of cluelessness

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 12:23:29 -0400

Nobody made us kings.  In fact, we are not kings.
On the other hand, we are not a publication house.  Someone having an idea 
and writing it up does not require us to publish it as an IETF 
standard.  Even if it is a good idea.
If someone wants to have the IETF work on something and produce a standard 
for a problem, then one dimension of that is agreeing to accept IETF review 
and modification of the idea and solution.

We can not stop someone from doing their own thing.  For example, if you 
want to use a new header call X-CHRISTIAN-TYPE and define content type 
values as you please, as long as you do not request IETF agreement that it 
is a good idea we can not stop you.  In that regard, the market can still 
choose.

It is true that the market attaches value to the IETF standardization.  To 
that degree, the market has made us judges and asked us to judge.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

At 10:58 PM 10/11/2003 -0700, Christian Huitema wrote:
>Well, who made us kings? It is one thing to work and publish designs
>that hopefully will be good. It is quite another to judge someone else's
>design and brand it bad. It is far better to let the market be judge.