Re: are we willing to do change how we do discussions in IETF?

[Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu>]

> The IETF wgs work well when there is a clear "best" solution or set  
> of more or less equivalent best solutions. As far as I can tell, the  
> wg process and the IETF process in general have a hard time working  
> well when there is no clear best solution so several interests must  
> be traded off against each other. If a wg succeeds in doing this,  
> there's always someone to cry faul because their favorite interest  
> didn't get top billing as soon as the result leaves the wg.

agreed - but to me this is just an indicator that the current process by which we run WGs is severely broken.

> Unfortunately, we don't seem to have a way to resolve this other than  
> let the market decide, which isn't too good for the IETF because it  
> means that some work done in the IETF is subsequently deemed a  
> failure and people who don't understand this take a dim view of the  
> IETF because they think it can't create good protocols. In reality,  
> the IETF is successful because it allowed the market to do its work  
> rather than to impose the choice of a small group. 

strongly disagree with this. the market is good at local optimization but is lousy at long-term foresight. it's even worse at technical foresight. and this has a lot to do with why the Internet is such a mess now.  IETF is the biggest repository of protocol design expertise, and the fact that IETF produces so many protocols which are poorly designed is not by any means an indicator of success.

Keith

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