The IETF Mission and Social Contract Introduction ------------ The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international community of network engineers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and facilitating the operation of the Internet. In the seventeen years since thirty-odd engineers first met in a single room, the Internet and the IETF have grown considerably; the IETF is attempting to adapt to these changes. Most of the basic processes and the social contracts by which the IETF works, both formal and informal, were developed when it was a community of fifty to two hundred engineers. Much of its internal communication depended on long-term personal relationships and an implicit understanding of shared goals and culture. This has worked well for many years and much growth. The IETF has been and is a very successful organization, and has produced much serious work which has both furthered its own goals of Internet evolution and had a notable effect on global human society. The processes and social contracts that worked for fifty engineers have managed to sustain the IETF in dealing with a community of thousands of engineers and a greatly expanded technology and market space. However, while Dave Clark's famous saying "We do not believe in kings, presidents, or voting. We believe only in rough consensus and running code," is still a touchstone of the IETF culture, the rapid growth of participation in the IETF, the growth of the Internet itself, and the rapid integration of Internet technology in real-world markets and society in general are seriously straining the IETF's traditional understated and informal communication and methods. Though the process of organizational change has actually been going on continuously for a long time, it would be useful to state more formally many previously implicit understandings and to make explicit some previously informal processes. This note tries to lay the social foundation for that continuing journey. The IETF Mission ---------------- The IETF's mission has historically been embedded in a shared understanding that making engineering choices based on the long term interest of the Internet as a whole produces better long-term results for each participant than making choices based on short term considerations, because the value of those advantages is ultimately derived from the health of the whole. The long term interest of the Internet includes the premise that "the Internet is for everyone". Two years ago, the IESG felt that making the mission of the IETF more explicit was needed. The following terse statement has since been promulgated, first by IESG members and then by others: "The purpose of the IETF is to create high quality, relevant, and timely standards for the Internet." Note that this clearly positions the IETF primarily as a standards development organization. There are other activities in the IETF; but if the IETF does not do its core mission, all else will quickly fade. This is intended to be an ordered list of characteristics. Timely standards of low quality or that are irrelevant will not serve the Internet's or the IETF's needs. This leaves open the very interesting and difficult questions of how to measure quality, relevance, and timeliness. The IETF has identified interoperability, security, and scalability as essential, but without attaching measurements to those characteristics. It is important that this is "For the Internet," and does not include everything that happens to use IP. IP is being used in a myriad of real-world applications, such as controlling street lights, but the IETF does not standardize those applications. Supporting Missions ------------------- Historically, the IETF has also been a place for experimentation, both with protocols and with operational practices. Testbeds such as the mbone, 6bone, etc., have been born, coordinated within, and run in association with the IETF. Such efforts have been very useful in developing high quality relevant standards. The IETF has also had a strong operational component, with a tight bond, and hence coordination, between protocol developers and network operators, and has had many participants who did both. This has provided valuable feedback to allow correction of misguided standardization efforts, and has provided feedback to sort out which standards were actually needed. As the field has grown explosively, specialization has set in, and market pressures have risen, there has been less and less operator participation in the IETF. Social Dynamics --------------- Growth has stressed many parts of the IETF's social and procedural fabric, and it may be useful to consider some fundamental forces that are causing these stresses. As they are neither good nor bad, it is not appropriate to call them "problems;" rather think of them as social forces and dynamics. Scaling - Increased Participation The IETF is a semi-formal community of individual engineers, not of organizations, expert in and dedicated to the growth and technical development of the Internet. With the popularity and explosive growth of the Internet, the number and diversity of people wanting or needing to participate in the IETF has grown a hundredfold. Many of these have had experience in other standards orgizations with different operating procedures and focus. As good engineers, these new participants have opinions, want to contribute, need to find a place in the complex social and technology fabric, and, in general, want to join the jostle of a now large organization. As the size and scope of the IETF have increased, the informal mechanisms for incorporating new participants have been strained, often creating the appearance of opaque barriers to entry. Scaling - More Complex Technical Interactions The number and span of interacting technologies has made the IETF a far more complex work space, both technically and socially. A culture that worked for layers three and four and 50-300 engineers is being severely stretched working at layers one through nine. Furthermore, many new participants now come from a far wider set of disciplines, making integration more difficult. Scaling - More External Interactions As the Internet has become widely popular, it has become a serious marketplace and is being seen as the communication infrastructure of the future. This has drawn serious attention from external forces such as vendors, press, regulators, politicians, and other standards organizations, whose traditional work now interacts with that of the IETF. Often, the relationship turns out to be tangential, but it takes a long time to get all parties to see this. The resultant need for quality interaction with these external forces places new needs and stresses on the IETF's view of how it represents itself. Quality and Architectural Review With the increase in complexity, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain the high quality that the IETF has always demanded. A bit of engineering in one space can and usually does interact with many other components of the Internet, and thus requires deep multi-area review and consensus. This has been most easily seen with security and operational scaling considerations, but actually happens across the board. As the number of engineers and work areas increases, the number of documents increases, and the resulting importance of and interactions needed for inter-area quality coordination and review grows as a product of these forces. Replacing Personalities with Process As the IETF grows and evolves, leaders come and go. Hence, the organization needs processes to both ensure continuity as leaders succeed each other, and to ensure that the organization remains open and fair, and can continue to interact successfully with the more complex environment in which the IETF now operates. But Not Too Much Process On the other hand, the IETF culture has always been to have formal processes grow only as needed, and it has resisted unneeded formal structures as impeding timeliness and driving out key players. There is deep cultural distrust of 'professional standards goers', for Dave Clark's kings and presidents, and for institutional authority. Tension Among the Dynamics Many of the above dynamics are in tension with each other; the IETF can not always have its cake and eat it too. One of the most critical tensions is the increase in the number of documents and the need for cross-technology review. The number of articulate engineers who have wide technological span and can and will review a lot of documents is not growing as fast as the document count. Changing What We Can Change --------------------------------------------- These social dynamics can be seen as underlying drivers of many of the problems identified by those attempting to improve the IETF. As part of the effort to diagnose those problems, identifying which of the underlying forces are or are not within the control of the IETF is an important aspect of targeting change. For those within the control of the IETF, a relatively small but fundamental change may engender substantial improvements in a number of areas. For those outside of the control of the IETF, changes may need to focus on ameliorating symptoms of the underlying problem or on enabling the community to work within the identified constraints. As part of the ongoing effort to improve the IETF, there will always be a number of specific proposals coming forward for discussion. Some may ask the community to consider changes to existing assumptions or structures; others may be intended to provide specific solutions to problems which require them. As those proposals emerge, the first step must be to recognize that the IETF will change over time, both as the community's membership changes and as the work it does evolves. In adapting the mechanisms by which the IETF operates, we are simply recognizing that reality. No matter what type of change is proposed, however, it is essential to make sure that the IETF continues to serve its basic mission well. That mission not only supports an industry and enables a technology; it makes the IETF as a community more than the sum of its parts.