Subject: RE: I-D file formats and internationalization

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 11:57:43 -0800

> From: Ted Faber [mailto:[email-masked]] 

> That's competent rhetoric.  It doesn't address the actual 
> state of affairs, but it reads well and is inflammatory.  Nice work.

Its an effective means of making a point in a memorable fashion.

What we are arguing for here is that the IETF should choose a
communication medium that makes its point in an effective manner.

> RFCs have authoritative versions for a couple reasons.  Some 
> are the result of the IETF consensus process and the exact 
> wording on which consensus was achieved is important to know. 
>  There are a significant number of cases where small changes 
> in the wording of an RFC or section thereof would not achieve 
> consensus. 

Agreed, but I have yet to see an example that would be affected by the
document format.

> To the extent that the internet community agrees 
> to abide by that consensus, the authoritative version is what 
> was agreed to.  For these RFCs the authority due them stems 
> from the consensus process.

Ah here you make the mistake of thinking that the IETF community is the
Internet community. Perhaps forty years ago, but certainly not today.

The IETF does not make any effort to be representative of the Internet
community. 

> Now, the IETF consensus process is performed by humans, and 
> therefore there will be mistakes.  In principle, however, it 
> is this process that conveys any authority on an RFC and not 
> some imperative handed down from an oligarchy, tyrant, or 
> supernatural power.  I don't think your analogy to
> the(?) church is particularly illuminating for that reason.

The analogy is very apt as your equation of the IETF with the Internet
community demonstrates. IETFers behave like cardinals and priests far
too often.

The lack of a pope does not damage the analogy in any way. The early
church was governed by independent bishops. The papacy was established
after an external authority (the emperor) got tired of their infighting,
doctrinal disputes &ct. Only one of the original four doctors of the
church was Bishop of Rome and the supremacy was never accepted by the
Eastern church.

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From: Ted Faber <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 20:24:52 -0800

> Agreed, but I have yet to see an example that would be affected by the

As far as pagination, no.  But I didn't get the impression that your
analogy was about the illumination, but about the text.

For the record, I think an authoritative plain text document with a
sufficiently rich character encoding to express authors' names is a
reasonable RFC format.  I think that generating those from a standard
content markup language is a good idea and that the generating markup
should be made commonly available to people revising documents.  I
expect to be driven to saying that again in 6 months.

> Internet community. Perhaps forty years ago, but certainly not today.

Point taken.  In my message s/Internet community/IETF community/g.
That's what I mean.  I did not intend for those communities to become
conflated.

> The IETF does not make any effort to be representative of the Internet

1) They do too.

Hmmm.  I would have thought proof by assertion would be more fun. 

Seriously, you can argue that the IETF is failing to reach the
stakeholders it claims to represent, but I think it's disingenuous to say
that the group doesn't try to reach them.  There are low barriers to
entry for interested parties, and concentrated efforts to find and
coordinate with other networking standards bodies.  Those aren't the
actions of a group of ostriches.

2) "Internet community" is a noun that can't meaningfully be used with
a definite article anymore.  There are lots of Internet communities from
webcomics artists through political bloggers and ebay merchants.  The
question of who makes up the IETF's constituency is a good one, though.

I think there are significant numbers of Internet network engineers for
whom the body still refelects consensus and who find the working dialogs
conducted there valuable.  I suspect there are folks who'll argue the
opposite.  I think most IETF participants think interested and
interesting factions are represented, or they'd stop coming.  A fair
number of entities who are not participants also are interested in what
the IETF publishes, even if their level of involvement does not extend
to taking part in making the sausage.  (By "sausage" I mean "IETF
standards documents.")

> community demonstrates. IETFers behave like cardinals and priests far

Though you've been mislead by my poor substitution (Internet != IETF),
my intent was not to indicate that I believe that the IETF speaks for
anyone but the IETF.  I would have hoped that the rest of my message
made that clear, but I'm happy to say it explicitly: IETF standards
documents reflect the consensus of the IETF participants at the time of
submission to the publication queue.  People who believe an IETF
standards document represents other things are misinformed.  If our only
point of contention is that you believe I was misinformed, let me assure
you I'm not.

> church was Bishop of Rome and the supremacy was never accepted by the

I still don't see how that applies to the IETF, unless it's something to
do with all that IETF restructuring that I'm ignoring.

-- 
Ted Faber
http://www.isi.edu/~faber           PGP: http://www.isi.edu/~faber/pubkeys.asc
Unexpected attachment on this mail? See http://www.isi.edu/~faber/FAQ.html#SIG
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From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 19:14:34 +0100

At 05:24 03/12/2005, Ted Faber wrote:
>IETF standards documents reflect the consensus of the IETF 
>participants at the time of submission to the publication 
>queue.  People who believe an IETF standards document represents 
>other things are misinformed.

Ted,
I am perfectly confortable with this. I am therefore totally 
unconfortable with the RFC 3935 doctrine the IETF standards documents 
are a way to "influence" and therefore the tools of a policy (in 
favor of a set of undefined "core values"). Whatever your religion a 
byte is a byte.
jfc