Dave Crocker wrote:
<rant>
This goes to the heart of the current paradigm problem with IETF
decision-making: There is nearly exclusive concern about preventing
all cases of problems, no matter how occasional or minor, with little
apparent concern for the affirmative need to *faciliate* progress.
For any interesting IETF effort, it is guaranteed that there are
potential problems with the outcome.
So the mere citation of that potential cannot reasonably justify any
decision, such as denial or such as imposing a requirement for
approval in a process that is, by its nature, intended for providing
coordination rather than for demonstration community support.
</rant>
The need is for balance, rather than the constant focus *only* on
corner cases. Corner cases are expensive... and rare.
I agree with the need for balance, but strongly disagree with the
characterization of corner cases. For example, corner cases that are
recognized as security holes have a tendency to become frequent
exploits. And for anything that operates at the scale of today's
Internet, rare cases can cause major problems even when they're not
security issues.
It would be grossly irresponsible for IETF to ignore identified
problems. Of course such problems should be evaluated in terms of
risk-versus-benefit. But the discussion is naturally going to focus on
the details of those problems rather than the big-picture benefit. You
can that the big picture is still being kept in mind because the goal of
the discussion of the problems is generally to find a way to solve those
problems rather than to throw out the flawed protocol entirely. While I
certainly agree that we can get bogged down in fixing trivial problems,
especially when those problems are identified late in the process (or
identified early, and ignored), I also think we don't go back to the
drawing board often enough.
Keith
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