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Re: IETF mission boundaries (Re: IESG proposed statement on the IETF mission )

2003-10-17 08:25:29

Sheesh!--next you'll be telling us that you never heard the phrase
"out of scope" before last week. 

Sure I have.  There's  hardly a piece of work done by  the IETF that someone
hasn't claimed to  be out of scope.   It's just that the phrase  is not used
consistently.  If  we look at the  historical facts about the  work that the
IETF has traditionally taken on, it's hard to draw any conclusion other than
that anything  is in  scope which  promotes and facilitates  the use  of the
Internet and of IP infrastructure.  And I think that's exactly what the IETF
should be doing.

The example I'm thinking about involved predecessors to OpenGL. 

As this example  doesn't even involve communication over  a network, I would
agree that it  is out of scope.   But that's a rather extreme  case, most of
the contentious areas do involve communications over an IP infrastructure.

Often the brutal  WG chairs say they don't think the  WG knows enough, but
it's the scope arguments that carry the day. 

I've never had  much luck myself with scope arguments,  unless they could be
backed up with an argument either that the center of expertise is elsewhere,
or that the topic has no bearing on IP.  Of course, people will sometimes be
willing  to  agree  that  the  center  of  expertise  is  elsewhere  without
necessarily agreeing that they themselves aren't experts ;-) Sometimes scope
arguments are merely  face-saving ways of saying "we don't  know what we are
doing".  Other times, scope arguments are merely "polite" ways of saying "we
don't think  you know what  you are doing".   You almost never  hear someone
saying "that sounds like a really  good idea, but unfortunately it is out of
scope". 







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