I think it's on track, as a description of the "common interest"
(a phrase someone used earlier).
I'm still itching for something that acts as a delimeter -- how
do we know whether we, collectively, should be working on X or
ignoring Y? How can we know when we are "succeeding" at our
mission?
Harald outlined some possibilities in terms of the
scope of the work, and people didn't seem to resonate with that
approach.
Is our mission to collectively work on some selection of things
of common interest? Do we have common view on means of determining
relevance in "relevant services in transit and edge networks"?
Are we obligated, by this statement of interest, to work on anything
someone (or a large enough collection of "someones") considers
relevant at a given point in time?
Someone earlier raised the point that the description of the space
in which we work (the IETF's scope) may not be the description of
the work that we collectively take on -- I guess I'm wondering whether
we can characterize the subset in some constructive way, so that
it will be clearer to us, and to communities trying to work with
us, what we should/will put energy into at a given point in time.
Leslie.
Fred Baker wrote:
Let me try to say all that succinctly:
"The Internet Engineering Task Force provides a forum for the
discussion and development of white papers and specifications for
the engineering issues of the Internet. This discussion builds on
hard lessons learned in research and operational environments, and
necessarily includes speakers from those communities. Vendors offer
wisdom on what can be built and made to work in their products, and
may bring customer or market issues whose owners cannot or will not
bring themselves.
The intended goal is well characterized as 'community memory' -
written observations and wisdom as well as protocols and operational
procedures defined - to enable the datagram internet to scalably
deliver relevant services in transit and edge networks."
Is that on target? Is it too many words?