Nobody made us kings. In fact, we are not kings.
On the other hand, we are not a publication house. Someone having an idea
and writing it up does not require us to publish it as an IETF
standard. Even if it is a good idea.
If someone wants to have the IETF work on something and produce a standard
for a problem, then one dimension of that is agreeing to accept IETF review
and modification of the idea and solution.
We can not stop someone from doing their own thing. For example, if you
want to use a new header call X-CHRISTIAN-TYPE and define content type
values as you please, as long as you do not request IETF agreement that it
is a good idea we can not stop you. In that regard, the market can still
choose.
It is true that the market attaches value to the IETF standardization. To
that degree, the market has made us judges and asked us to judge.
Yours,
Joel M. Halpern
At 10:58 PM 10/11/2003 -0700, Christian Huitema wrote:
Well, who made us kings? It is one thing to work and publish designs
that hopefully will be good. It is quite another to judge someone else's
design and brand it bad. It is far better to let the market be judge.