Keith Moore writes, sarcastically:
But heaven forbid that someone should actually try to understand those
problems, and get consensus on a solution, before deploying something
which might make the problem worse.
The idea that new interfaces should wait for approval from a
standardization committee is patently absurd.
I already gave the examples of C, the original Internet protocols, IRC,
HTTP, Java, Internet telephones, and (on a much smaller scale) X-Loop.
All of these advances were deployed without approval from control freaks
like Keith.
Should people understand what they're doing? Of course. Should people
avoid creating interoperability problems? Of course. But the Internet
has all sorts of protocol extension mechanisms: TCP ports, header
fields, etc. The value of those mechanisms would be practically
destroyed if every new extension required IETF approval.
---Dan