Re: Fwd: Re: IP: Microsoft breaks Mime specification

[Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net>]

At 01:15 PM 1/22/2002 -0800, Marshall T. Rose wrote:
> the ietf does standardization, it does not do interoperability testing,
> conformance certification, or protocol policing. we rely on other
> organizations and the market for those tasks.

marshall,

Although I thought your note was wonderfully thorough, concise and 
insightful, it appears that your core message was missed by some.

What I took to be your core message was that if an organization is going to 
claim responsibility for judging the adequacy of implementations, then that 
organization needs to create a thorough and fair process for creating and 
handling those judgements.  Anything informal or incomplete would be 
extremely irresponsible.

The fact that such irresponsibility would likely have legal impact should 
not distract anyone from noting that, first and foremost, anything less 
than a full-blown and fair process would be irresponsible.

As others have noted, the IETF is rather busy doing a different job.  So 
the most the IETF should do is wish someone well if they try to pursue this 
assessment-and-enforcement job.

Alas, it is not possible for the IETF to do everything, as we keep discovering.

d/


----------
Dave Crocker  <mailto:dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
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