On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 12:24:37PM +0100, Alessandro Vesely wrote:
My ignorance of IETF's inner functioning is so deep that I cannot even
tell what is the equivalent of a mentoring professor or a sponsoring
organization within the IETF, let alone finding one. As an Internet
user, I may have a problem, hypothesize possible causes, and wait for
solutions to be proposed or formulate a tentative solution myself.
The question is, is the IETF the natural referent of such occurrences?
Nope.
Does the "I" in its name promote it as the universal coordinator for
Internet related issues?
I think the more critical letter is the "E" in the name. It is an
engineering organization; that is, it is a place where engineers can
get together to collaborate on engineering problems. There are
several steps between "a user having a problem", and "working together
on an engineering solution".
Some of these steps might include include, "gathering requirements
from end-users to figure out what a valid solution to their problem
might look like" (as we all know, what users *think* is the problem
isn't always the problem; and just because a truck driver is the
'customer' of the bridge does not make a truck driver competent to
design bridges), and "figuring out whether there are enough customers
who are willing to pay at the right price point so it is economically
viable to put engineers to work on a problem". Those are both areas
where the IETF does not function well; which is fine, that's not its
job.
So if you are an Internet user, you should talk to your providers, and
tell them your problems. It's admittedly easier if you are a CIO of a
major company, and can tell a few router companies, "fix this problem
and my next $10 million order will go your company." If you don't
have that kind of buying power, maybe you can get a large number of
like-minded users together and together you'll have enough buying
power to attract the attention of companies.
Or, if you have enough technical expertise that you can design
internet protocols by yourself, the IETF is open to submissions from
anyone; not just large companies who receive $10 million purchase
orders from aforementioned CIO's. But you have to bring your own
engineering talent. It's unlikely you will be able to get people to
do work for you for free.
(The same is true for the open source projects, BTW; if you want some
feature which isn't already in open source software, you can either
pay to have it developed, or you can do it yourself. "Open" means
that you can have your choices of which company or engineer you hire
to do the work. It's like buying a car which does not have its hood
locked so that mechanics at the car dealership have a monopoly on
fixing your problem. But having a car which does not have its hood
welded shut does not mean that car maintenance gets done for free;
just that there's honest competition for your car maintenance
dollars.)
I think a negative answer would affirm the view of the IETF as an SDO
only.
It's an SDO only.
A positive answer would imply the IETF is something more than an SDO.
Possibly the embryo of a technocracy. That would call for more
dendritic links to the Internet at large. For example, someone
proposed to add more entries and comments to the IETF's Outcomes Wiki.
And once you tell us how you plan to pay for all of these engineers to
do the work proposed on an "Outcomes Wiki", maybe we could talk about
such a hypothetical organization. But for now, capitalism, and
customer buying products which fund companies to send engineers to
IETF meetings is the only model I know of which has been proven to
work.
Best regards,
- Ted
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