Interoperable with what?
Probably as a solution to this question, the "logo yanking" process
should basically boil down to, a system of checks and balances,
as originated by someone who isn't happy with a vendor. Kind of
like an "Ombudsman" in the standards community who's power is
to reduce the marketability of a given product. Over time this
power could grow significantly, and become very critical. If it
did, that would be wonderful for everyone, because interoperability,
as a whole benefits the Community as a whole, and puts the emphasis
on superior implementations, and not on standards control.
I.e., the issue be raised by whoever has the grievance with a given,
logo-endowed vendor. He/she makes a list of the specific
interoperability problems they are having. This is then submitted,
in some official capacity to both the vendor and the ISOC.
If the ISOC (or some other group / committee in charge of this)
feels the complaint is a justified violation of "good faith
interoperability", they can submit it to the vendor, and say they
are beginning the procedure for "logo yanking." It should take
maybe 12 months (maybe longer for some hardware issues) and give
the vendor double the normal time. I guess it would need to
be enforced by whatever
Ultimately the process of "logo yanking" really amounts to the
process of taking away a benefit, as opposed to a punishment.
Being able to put the logo on a product is certainly a significant
benefit, from a marketing standpoint. If the logo becomes recognized
and enforced in contracts, it could, some day down the way, become
a very potent thing.
Overall there are three general benefits that this kind of an idea
would deliver:
- Increased interoperability, all around, help to "curtail"
bad vendor behavior. If product designers know how important
the IETF logo is to have on their product, they are going to
think about that at the early stages of product development.
- Increased marketability of products delivered by
"interoperability-caring" vendors.
- More money for ISOC/IETF functions.
The downsides are the application fee ($100), a little bit of time
on the part of whoever owns the trademark (but the reg fees could
deliver sufficient administrative budget to handle that).
Frankly, I don't think it should be up to external government
systems or others to reign in badly behaving vendors. It is up
to *US* the engineers to reign these people in. My increasing
view is that it really is up to us. We're engineers, we can understand
far better how to keep other engineers in line better than anyone
else. We've all had that errant engineer working in our company.
The ego guy, or the lazy guy, the arguer, whatever. Engineers
know how to handle engineers.
The problem today is that we know how to handle bad vendors,
but we do not have the capacity to get them to do, well, anything
to address interoperability.
If we can tie a rope around the the proverbial money stream of a bad
vendor, we help to insure it makes financial sense to be a
good vendor.
Personally, I think the time has come for something like this.
I'm tired of misbehaving people and abusive people. It's
horrifically inefficient. There are *SO MANY* problems IT has
to solve, the one thing we shouldn't have is standards battles.
Technology is hard as hell for normal people to use. *THAT*
is the battle technology vendors should be focusing on, not these
blasted standards battles, which are ridiculous in their own
right. The enemy here is the "standards control" business
model. The victors should be the best implementors.
This kind of a thing is only dangerous to people who view the
end all and be all of their livelihood to be the proprietorization
of standards. That kind of behavior is the enemy of both IETF
as a whole, and the entire technology industry. Because it makes
it harder on everyone, because everyone has to learn multiple
technologies, and you have varied benefits laying all over the place.
It's not like there is a shortage of IT problems to solve.
Everything is too hard to use.
Fundamentally, government shouldn't be reigning in bad vendors,
*WE* should be, and the way to do it is to tie a rope around the
marketability of "Internet Compliant" products, and then educate
CIOs about the importance of this.
The thing I always hated about certification/conformance, blah blah,
is that it imposes a static, fixed cost on all parties and isn't
issue driven. I like this idea, because you pay your $100, you
get improved product marketability in return, and it is totally
problem or issue driven, as opposed to a static/fixed cost being
eaten by all vendors, good or bad.
Kyle Lussier
AutoNOC LLC