Re: Letting The Market Decide

["David W. Morris" <dwm at xpasc.com>]

On Thu, 2 Apr 1998, Ed Krol wrote:

> For years the way IETF dealt with lack of consensus was to put
> up competing proposals and "let the market decide".  It seems
> to be the IETF equivalent of a punt. Sitting in my third working
> group meeting where this suggestion was made I realized that it
> was now probably synonymous with "let's do what microsoft says".
> 
> And I wonder how many people would embrace that notion.

And what makes you think that producing an IETF concensus standard which
microsoft chooses to ignore will make a difference? Only if it is so
obviously correct that the majority of the industry agrees AND implements
it might it have a chance. Sure you /we can have the intellectual
satisfaction of completing the process ... so what?

Success to me is having my work make a useful contribution. Microsoft may
be a lot of things I'm not comfortable with, but in my experience they are
smart and usually have good technical reasons for the approach they
select. If the IETF can't reach concesus, then I must conclude there is
substantial honest technical disagreement. One way for proponents of a
particular approach to prove their point is to demonstrate thru successful
deployement that the problem is solved. If one group convinces the major
implementors of the viability of an approach, they done good.

Dave Morris