[mailto:owner-newtrk(_at_)lists(_dot_)uoregon(_dot_)edu] On Behalf Of Eric
Rosen
Eliot> Even if someone *has* implemented the telnet TACACS user
Eliot> option, would a user really want to use it?
Eric> I don't know. Do you?
Eliot> Yes, I do. Many of us do. And that's the point.
I'm sure you think you know, but I don't know that you
know, which means that a lot of people have to waste a lot
of time preventing you from doing damage.
Are you also the one who "knows" that OSPF demand circuits
are never used? . newtrk
Should the fact that someone uses something mean that it should be
considered a standard?
If so the MARID group was a mistake, SPF should simply have been accepted as
is without discussion.
Lets do a thought experiment, should EBCDIC be considered a 'standard'? It
is certainly used but there is no imaginable sense in which anyone would
ever suggest building on top of it.
The whole point of standards is that you are narrowing down the range of
design choices. That means discarding standards that are of antiquarian
interest only.
The number of Internet users is now approaching or may have reached a
billion. Please make an effort to recognize your responsibility to the 99%
of those users for which the debate on legacy technology is irrelevant but
have some very real and very urgent issues with the technology they are
faced with using.
What is meant by taking a spec off standard is that it will no longer be
maintained. This means no more updates, but it also means that future specs
will not be constrained by it either.
This is important for two reasons, first there is simply too much junk that
is too badly organized that people demand backwards compatibility for. The
early ASRG discussions had folk prattling on about the need to continue to
support UUCP. The second reason is the opposite of the first, there are some
very important dependencise that should be maintained but are not because
they get lost in the sheer volume of irrelevant cruft.
As Larry King's first boss told him: This is a communications business. Like
it or not the Internet is now the Web and the influence any party can have
is dependent on their ability to communicate a coherent message. The IETF
has been unable to communicate a coherent message about its work. Take a
look at the IETF web site and compare it to the W3C and OASIS sites. Finding
out what the IETF has done through the web site takes a lot of effort. W3C
and OASIS tell you their list of achievements straight up on their front
door.
Each one of the crufty irrelevant specicfications is diluting the IETF
message. If you continue to tell people that backwards compatibility with
obsolete mainframe terminals based on specifications from the punch card age
is important while failing to tell people that stopping the current Internet
crime wave is important then it is very easy for people to dismiss you.
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