Re: are we willing to do change how we do discussions in IETF? (was: moving from hosts to sponsors)

[Tim Bray <tbray at textuality.com>]

On Jun 24, 2006, at 8:55 AM, Keith Moore wrote:

> That's not quite sufficient, because most WGs aren't proceeding  
> according to good engineering discipline (e.g. they're doing things  
> in the wrong order, like trying to define the protocol before the  
> problem space is understood)

I'd generalize that.  I have never seen *any* standards org do a good  
job of inventing new technology.  I've been working with the soon-to- 
wind-down Atompub group for a couple of years and we got a pretty  
good result I think (if you can judge by implementations &  
deployments).  There were a few things in our favor - a high level of  
interest and energy, lots of experience on the WG, decent editors -  
but the key thing was there was a ton of hands-on experience in the  
space (syndication technology).  A whole lot of the key arguments  
could be resolved by appeal to example and experience.

When standards orgs go out to invent stuff in unexplored territory  
you get disasters like OSI networking, CORBA, and in the current  
landscape, WS-*.  I suppose there are exceptions but I don't know of  
any.

 -Tim

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