I'd like to hear the IETF community's input on the topic.
IMHO: IETF has limited resources, and as such, it cannot investigate
every solution that someone might propose for every problem that
exists or is thought to exist on the Internet. IETF leadership
has to choose where to invest those resources. Such choices
are significantly informed by the expressed interests of IETF
participants.
In short, IETF works on what its participants want to work on.
It cannot effectively work on a proposal that has little or no
support from its participants.
We try to be reasonably open to new proposals from anywhere, as long as
there are people to work on them, and we hope that this makes it easy
for people with really good ideas to develop/standardize them in the IETF.
But there's always a chance that IETF might miss a useful solution
to some problem because that solution originates from outside of IETF.
There's nothing that IETF can do about that situation. The fact that this
situation exists can even be useful for IETF - it can help IETF retain a
sense of humility that makes it easier for IETF participants to accurately
judge the value of technical contributions. (though of course we do still
make mistakes!)
Similarly, there will always be people who feel that they've somehow
been shafted by IETF. But nothing stops those people from taking
their proposals to other standards bodies, from starting their own
advocacy groups for those proposals, or from trying to get vendors to
implement their propsals without the imprimatur of a standards body.
All of these strategies are successfully employed on a regular basis.
But neither do such people have the rights to demand support from IETF -
that would be tantamount to putting words in the mouths of IETF
participants - forcing them to lie about their technical assessments
and where their interests are.
Folks who think that IETF has screwed them because it didn't support
their proposal have the burden of demonstrating both that their proposals
are technically sounder than any other proposals that were supported;
and that that there was a significant constituency who was willing to
do the work on their proposal, in IETF, and under IETF rules. If they
can't do that, they are wasting our time and theirs, and they should go
elsewhere.
Keith