Comments inline
Eric,
We're not out to rid the world of patent-laden work, nor are
we out to make patent owners rich. The IETF exists to
promulgate relevant and correct standards to the Internet
Community, and educate people on their intended safe use.
There is a fine balance to be had between the two extremes.
We are only part of the open source community if what you
mean is that participation is open to all, and our documents
are freely available to all. Keep this in mind: the vast
majority of participants in the IETF are funded by their
employers to attend, and MOST of the resulting code is NOT
open source.
Right....AND there's a difference between some small standard that
doesn't affect a lot of people and still has many competing proprietary
implementations, versus quite possibly the most ubiquitous IP application on
earth (email). For example at the last IETF meeting someone made it clear
that they had IP on the data in one RTP packet format or another (the
details escape me and are irellevant) and little issue was raised.
While I personally think there will forever be an expanding core of
open source software, and IP is on it's way out, I don't think Open source
software is somehow more righteous then proprietary software. To me it's
just an inevitable consequence of software becoming uniquitous, and the
intelligence of many of the people at the core of the development world,
similar to acadamia where being wrong is OK and peer review and
reproducability are paramount (I just realized this myself though I've been
in acadamia for a while on and off). In short the IETF is the refuge of
people who treat technology as a science not a product(while it may of
course lead to many as science does). I too am supported by an employer who
has proprietary code as one of their products. There will always be
proprietary software around the core.
The history of complex standards is that it takes time to get
them done correctly. Take a look at MIME, one of the
standards that you used in the construction of your email
message. That effort was the outcome of a huge debate that
started in 1990 and didn't get out the door until 1992, and
that was an argument amongst a relatively small group of
people. So just because MARID didn't finish doesn't mean the
IETF is done with spam.
For a long time the IETF was not even recognized because it wasn't a
dues based organization, nor was it government controlled and chartered. Yet
it has and continues to work amazingly, and I believe the organization and
attitiude of the majortiy of it's members is reflected in the openess and
interoperability of the internet in general. Today it's an accepted part of
the way things in the world are done. And doesn't the internet work
beautifully today? I think so! Granted it would be nice if software could
co-ordinate like the semiconductor industry does, but even there there are
competing ideas beyond the core feature size agreements and semincon. It's
interesting to note that MIME, which was done right has now pervaded SO much
more than was originally intended.
<quote from Eric Raynmond>
A month later, my assessment of the political damage the Sender-ID mess has
done to IETF has only gone up. You are on a fast road to irrelevance,
gentlemen. You'd best be thinking about how to change
*that* rather than conducting meaningless exercises in rearranging your
bureaucracy.
</quote from raymond>
That being said when science (which is what I consider the IETF)
confronts reality sometimes they butt heads. Doesn't it seem that publishing
a standard that is generally considered worthless and non-implementable by
the core of the internet that runs on open source software is a faster path
to irellevance than anything?
Tom
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