Branching off from the interminable "justifiable changes" thread....
Dropping DKIM, because those people suffer enough without being subjected to
more general discussion about the nature of the universe at IETF :-)
I applaud Cullen for his note. I agree with the parts that Harald snipped
out, too (I'm just trying to post below the thread branch, so followups stay
together).
I think that's a good way to get things out the door in a reasonable
timeframe; I also think that the IETF at the moment lacks venues for the
(probably interminable) discussions about what approaches to a problem
exists and whether there are non-chartered alternatives that are worth
following up - but I think the approach of chartering a WG to look at one
and only one approach is a reasonable one.
The analogy I've been using in private e-mail discussion on how new work
comes into the IETF is that the IETF is a bakery that's become pretty
difficult to enter with only a bag full of raw ingredients, but if people
bring in a finished cake with frosting and just ask for a boz to put the
cake in, we're not a bakery any more.
It really is a problem that (as Harald says) we don't have a good place to
discuss alternative solutions, given that we are trying to be an engineering
task force that may also standardize protocols, not a protocol
standardization task force that occasionally tries to engineer something.
People who need to solve a problem have every incentive to deploy what they
believe is a solution to their problems as soon as they can specify it. The
more specification work that happens on the way to the IETF, the more likely
that work is to be deployed while we are discussing charters, the more
pushback we see on charter discussion, and the less likely a second-round
version of the protocol is to be widely deployed.
I'd also like to point to Thomas Narten's draft on "how to run a successful
BOF" (currently
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-narten-successful-bof-00.txt). I
would like to see some changes considered for the way we bring new work into
the IETF, but getting a baseline on how it works today is a critical first
step. I have provided a page or two of comments to Thomas, CC: Brian as
General AD, and hope that others also look it over and provide feedback
(soon)
Thanks for reading,
Spencer
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