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Re: draft-klyne-msghdr-registry-00.txt

2002-02-02 11:02:39

At 16.52 -0500 02-01-30, Keith Moore wrote:
 > I really should back off and see what other people think, but there's one
 more viewpoint I'd like to offer:  it could be argued that the existence 
of
 an open registry would have the opposite effect;  i.e. it could encourage
 developers with half-baked ideas to come together, pool their thoughts and
 come up with something more fully-baked?

If the registry did have that effect, it would be a Good Thing.  But the
only way that I can see to have this effect is to encourage people to
get consensus on specifications for new fields before they are defined,
and especially, before they are widely deployed.

I do not think that is possible. If people feel the need
for a header, they will implement it, even if there is no
consensus. Take for example my suggestions for translation
headers. You did yourself recommend, if I remember rightly,
that we should implement it and get experience with it
before asking to have it made into a standard. This is
closely related to "experimental" standards and is the way
IETF often work: Implement first, make a standard
afterwards. Pros: The standard will be based on practical
experience. Cons: A badly designed header may inadvertently
get wide implementation.

First,  I said we should "encourage" people to get consensus before deployment,
not that we should "force" people.  I agree that it's not possible to force
people to get consensus before deploying code.  But practices that encourage
review and consensus can still be useful.

Second, there's a difference between gettting consensus and standardization.
It's possible to get consensus on a proposal without meeting the 2026 
requirements for standards-track, and this happens frequently.

Third, though IETF often does "implement first, make a standard afterwards"
it's not often the case that the protocol that is first implemented becomes 
a standard without any changes.  And the protocols for which this does 
happen are usually those that had rough consensus (or at least some
review and changes based on feedback) before deployment.

Keith