On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 6:01 AM, SM <sm at resistor.net> wrote: > At 21:22 29-10-2009, Ian Hickson wrote: >> >> What is the process for proceeding in the IETF when people have >> fundamentally different and mutually exclusive opinions? Speaking from experience of the AMQP design process over the last five years, which was riven by such arguments... Technical designs should not be opinion-driven at all. There are optimal (provably optimal) solutions for any well-defined problem. If two people do not agree on such solutions then either they are solving different problems (this is most common), or they are not aiming for optimal solutions but instead familiar and/or pre-existing solutions (this is also common). Or they are just incompetent with delusions of competence (perhaps most common). Even the expression of opinion is a sign that the design process is failing or will fail to pinpoint the most accurate solution. A forced compromise often creates a mediocre solution. A better way to resolve the conflicts of interest that many of us bring to such discussions is to create competition between solutions, i.e. multiple protocols that implementors can choose. Over time that will drive the solutions towards an optimum. This is all opinion, of course and does not answer the question of how the IETF works, but may be a useful guideline for knowing how to resolve conflicts of opinion. Namely, if you start by saying "I think", you are probably wrong. :-) -Pieter Hintjens
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