ietf-822
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Re: 7/8-bit conversion vs. bouncing

1991-07-15 06:38:03
Keld Simonsen writes:
: Erik Naggum writes:

The IETF-822 and IETF-SMTP lists have generated 3000 pages worth of
printout since the St. Louis meeting (yes, I, the fool, printed it all
out), and _still_ we're discussing "European vs American".  I almost
can't believe it!  I _can_ believe it when I see that Keld is the
driving force behind this whining.  Stop it.

: I am flattered! Little me being able of having people generating
: 3000 pages of email!  --- I just try to keep up to reading the stuff and
: I got out of the active RFC XXXX discussion quite some time ago, 
: now concentrating on my own draft RFCs. So maybe you think too much of me
: Erik!

Excuse me, but I think you're totally lost.  The reference to the number
of pages of printout has nothing whatsoever to do with your particular
problems with Americans.  This list also has no particular interest in
what I think of you, so I'll skip that.

: But I think that Europeans and Americans have different needs and thus
: priorities, and also that the Americans in the case of IETF has more to
: say than the Europeans.

Aye, the Americans have "more to say" in IETF than the Europeans.  Let me
state for the record, so that people know what I think of the IETF and the
issue of American vs European:

        The IETF is the single most non-political body of technical
        experts that I have seen in my 10-year career.  The IETF has
        a track record of listening to technical problems irrespective
        of country or person of origin which is _unsurpassed_ in the
        standardization business.

Your country of origin may matter in ISO work, it may matter in CCITT,
CEN, CENELEC, ECMA, etc, work, but it does not matter in IETF work.
The IETF is not made up of government-appointed officials from a set of
countries, but of interested, technical experts, wherever they may live
or work.

Your arguments to the effect that we should have some kind of "democratic"
IETF based on country of origin is extremely counter-productive.  We're
engineers, not politicians.  We have problems to solve, not political
agendas to fulfill.  This difference is absolutely essential.

In my experience and from watching several working groups in progress,
the IETF will listen if you have points of technical merit; it will not
listen if you have points solely of political merit.  It is this latter
which, perhaps, have caused you to believe that there is any point in
arguing about the number of Americans vs the number of Europeans in the
IETF and its working groups.

Sorry for belaboring the point.  Now back to the country-of-origin-
independent discussions.

</Erik>

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