Well, here we need to give the benefit of the doubt. The IETF is an open
process where the input of all is welcommed. I am sure that at the end of the
day the people of the IETF will contribute towards doing the right thing.
I know you will give me examples of the contrary, but I am a strong beilver of
the democratic process.
this might sound nit-picky, but IETF does not work by a democratic process.
it works by consensus, which is not the same thing.
the process generally works pretty well as long as:
- the group over which consensus is measured doesn't manage to exclude
(by whatever means) competing interests, and
- the group isn't allowed to be derailed by one or two folks who are
opposed to the rest of the group reaching consensus, and who refuse
to compromise.
but if you want an IETF working group to approve something which you know is
controversial, all you have to do is find some way to make it likely that
the vast majority of people participating in that group share your opinion
of the appropriate outcome. one way to do this is by populating your group
with marketing people (or similar) who speak nothing but fully buzzword-
compliant nonsense. if this happens, the chances are good that any engineers
who attend will quickly conclude that they are wasting their time, and go
elsewhere. by the time the group submits its documents to IESG, there is
strong pressure to accept them or to make only small corrections. problem
is, the documents don't make enough sense for anyone to come up with good
technical criticism of them.
the best fix is to either get new groups started on the right foot,
or to kill them before they can multiply.
Keith