At 04:26 24/06/2006, Keith Moore wrote:
Heaven forbid the internet Engineering task force should actually do
engineering. Remember engineering? That's the discipline of
producing efficient designs that meet predetermined goals and requirements.
IETF is already plunging toward irrelevance at terminal
velocity. The only way to arrest the descent is for it to start
producing better quality and more relevant specifications. A good
start would be for it to actually pay some attention to the problem
definition and rough specification phases and to conduct them in an
environment where they can get meaningful review outside of a narrow community.
IETF deliverable user QA.
This is the main thing I am interested in (in my
Multilingual/Multilateral Internet area). Sometimes it calls for some
weak to strong strategy to obtain better (yet not respected) texts.
This is probably because there are not so many interested yet in that
area (what is another issue).
However the real problem I met is the now structural disinterest of
the IESG when considering a WG document to know if it matches the WG
Charter. Producing efficient designs is something one can only try,
but striving to meet predetermined goal and requirements should be a
demanded prerequisite.
I wandered why the Internet standard process degraded (IMHO) that
way. I feel it is because the IESG/IAB are not assigning
predetermined goals and specifying requirements when chartering. They
indicate an area to be considered. So the WG is actually to consider
the whole issue (not only engineering but also market study, etc).
This leads to postdetermined goals and requirements. The IAB/IETF
consider the "geography" of the proposed WG, not the "political"
motivations of its proponents. Then the IESG only considers if the
delivery fits the geography of the WG area, and if it has an inner
logic. This is probably because they have not the time/resources to
verify if that logic fits the logic of the Internet architecture
(they made too complex to understand in proceeding this way).
jfc
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