Mark Seery wrote:
[..]
The ethos of running code is all about establishing a proof that something
works.
I never said otherwise. "Running code" has been a useful means for reducing the
solution space from which the IETF publishes. It has never been a hard and fast
metric of good design. (Indeed, if anything the IETF's history has shown a
number
of protocol designs that were running code and yet still only waypoints towards
better designs in the future.)
But that's really not the point here. The role of an _engineering_ taskforce
is to act like engineers, not a vanity press. Our output should be educated
guidance to the wider community - created with diligence and offered with
humility.
We can do no more and should do no less.
(Arguments that the IETF prevents deployment by preventing publication are a
red-herring and should be discarded as such. The "market" has shown a remarkable
affinity, at times, to protocols that have either never been fully published or
published outside the IETF.)
cheers,
gja
--
Grenville Armitage
http://caia.swin.edu.au
I come from a LAN downunder.