I have to agree with Ed here. It is an all out standards war, what
we've got isn't working.
I certainly understand the reasoning behind the current
certification "construct".
But we aren't seeing the desired effects. My argument is that there
should be a single trademark, owned by IETF, that, as a vendor, you
can pay $100 or something, submit an application, sign a waiver that
it supports to the RFC's and be able to use the trademark.
All we need is for someone to come up with a trademark, get IETF
approval on the specific trademark, assign ownership of the trademark
to IETF, and start collecting checks.
Then, relevant members of the IETF, on their own, should be
able to attack a product based on IETF compliance to either pull
the logo, or stop shipping the product.
My feelings here, is that the existing construct doesn't seem
forceful enough. Some companies are wonderful (cisco comes to mind,
to my own personal experiences), and some companies are very very
bad, none of us have a shortage of examples in that space.
The process, as it stands, appears to be ineffective in enforcing
standards compliance. My feeling is that is because the certification
process appears to be far to distributed amongst to many people.
There are more than one trademarks to, aren't there? For each
individual spec? There should just be one, powerful trademark.
What is the cost of losing? More crappy products. A proprietary
solution will not win everything because there is always going
to be people fighting about it. The only thing that can win is
publicly and rigorously enforced standards. We have the worst of
all scenarios right now. A severely ingrained proprietary standard
trying to defeat weaker public standards which won't go away.
That means... everyone has to learn two technologies, two products,
two ways of doing things. That is horrible for end users, developers,
and the technology business as a whole because it doubles the costs
of everything and all new things happen at half speed.
Kyle Lussier
AutoNOC LLC
Im my early statement, I was not suggesting that the IETF be the
certification company, but that the IETF registers a series of trademarks
("Internet compatible","Internet Ready",...) and then call for tender from
certifications companies. These certification companies will get the right
to select who should or shouldn't be able to use the trademarks on their
products....
IETF/ISOC is the holder (copyrighter) of the RFC (ie standards) as well as
holder of the trademarks, and they select annually companies that are the
most capable to test products and say that these products are complaint with
RFC standards...
So like this, most of the job is removed from IETF mainstream work, and the
litigation process will be against the certification company, not the holder
of standard or trademarks...
The RFCs wwould be still public, companies will be still able to make RFC
compatible products, the opensource movement will be still able to develop
and implement RFC compatible protocols and products, and the best products
would be easily recognised through the certification.
Franck Martin
Network and Database Development Officer
SOPAC South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission
Fiji
E-mail: franck(_at_)sopac(_dot_)org <mailto:franck(_at_)sopac(_dot_)org>
Web site: http://www.sopac.org/
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