The likes of implementers (of protocols), whether in the open-source community
or as an employee of a vendor of hardware or software, should be given as
much, if not more, consideration.
Ditto folks who are involved in designing/building host operating systems or
equivalent embedded systems.
I fully agree with this. Yet the opinions of "implementers" may not be
easy to distinguish initially.
For example, some of the IETF's most famous "controversies" turned out not
to be much of a contest when looked at in retrospect -- the implementers
ended up all on one side of the debate. The question is whether this was
obvious at the time, and whether we could have settled the arguments
sooner.
There are some current situations in the IETF, where IMHO it is quite
obvious that a consensus of implementers exists, as judged by
interoperable implementations. Yet the IETF persists in taking an
alternate path with (seemingly) little prospect of success. Often in
these cases the "bogo-standards" are being pushed by the WG chair(s) or
ADs with little or no real backing from the IETF community.
I'd suggest it would be preferrable for these efforts to "fail early"
rather than taking years to meet their inevitable demise.
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