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RE: Fwd: Re: IP: Microsoft breaks Mime specification

2002-01-23 08:00:03
The process of developing test specifications is slow, tedious, 
and about as alluring as the prospect of writing a MIB. 

Poor old Thomas. But I suppose you're used to it by now, Tom? ;-)

Peter.

-----Original Message-----
From: Melinda Shore [mailto:mshore(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com]
Sent: 23 January 2002 14:01
To: Dave Crocker; lussier(_at_)AUTONOC(_dot_)COM
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: IP: Microsoft breaks Mime specification


At 10:39 PM 1/22/02 -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
And you think that it is possible to do such a thing without all of the
considerable, formal mechanisms that normally accompany having one
institution (the IETF) pass judgement on another (the vendor) especially
when that judgement carries financial impact on the vendor?

And you think that the vendor will not return the favor and seek financial
impact on the IETF(and its participants)?

The entire process will certainly have an impact on the organization,
even if "certification" is never revoked.  The process of developing
test specifications is slow, tedious, and about as alluring as the
prospect of writing a MIB.  It tends to attract relatively few people
and the tests themselves are hard to verify for completeness.  We've
all been watching the process of completing documents getting slower
and slower and slower and slower and slower, and stuff like this can
only compound the problem.

I tend to think that if Connectathon weren't useful it wouldn't still
be held after lo, these many years.  What's being requested here isn't
conformance testing, which we've got, but a seal of approval specifically
from the IETF.  I don't understand why this specific thing would be more
valuable than some other similar thing.  It seems to me that if people 
really want this they should go and raise funding to start something like 
an Underwriters Lab analog.  I'm really not sure why some people think 
this has to be in the IETF.

Melinda



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