From: Eric Rosen <erosen(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com>
- "For the Internet" - only the stuff that is directly involved in making
the Internet work is included in the IETF's scope.
In other words, routing, DNS, and Internet operations/management. Adopting
this as the IETF's mission would be a very radical change indeed! While
this particular mission statement does seem to reflect the interests of a
certain notorious IESG member, let's not pretend that this has ever been the
limit of the IETF's mission. The IETF has always been concerned with things
that make the Internet more useful, and with things that expand the utility
of the IP protocol suite. There's never been a time when "for the Internet"
was an accurate representation of the IETF's concerns.
That is wrong or at least a gross overstatement.
...
The formulation I like is "Everything that needs open, documented
interoperability and runs over the Internet is appropriate for IETF
standardization". This is much truer to the IETF's current and historical
practice.
That is also wrong or at least a gross overstatement. There have been
many things that the IETF has chosen to step away from but that ran
and run over the Internet. Some graphics standards come immediately
to my mind.
That doesn't necessarily mean that the IETF has to standardize everything
that falls within its mission. For instance, a particular area might fall
within the mission, but the IETF might not have the expertise to tackle it.
A WG in that area could then be rejected on the grounds of "insufficient
expertise". Such decisions would have to be made on a case-by-case basis.
Again, this is the way such decisions have always been made in the IETF.
No committee is ever able to limit itself on grounds of insufficient
expertise. The people who join committees are predisposed to think
that they're sufficiently expert to deal with the subject matter.
Those graphics standards were kept out of the IETF not because the
working groups involved thought they didn't think they were experts,
but because the subject was out of scope for the IETF. That most of
participants had no clues about computer graphics was incomprehensible
to most of the participants, and unfortunately irrelevant.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com