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Re: Conclusion of the last call on draft-housley-two-maturity-levels

2011-09-10 16:48:00
Whether they were planned as part of revamp plan or not, I don't see the two-step and the RFC2119bis efforts and recent debates here as a mere coincidence.

Here is how Pareto Optimality design decisions are made such that no-one could be made better off without making someone else worse off. I only point this out that we sometimes we to accept change where one might not be better off.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency#Pareto_frontier

   The Pareto frontier is particularly useful in engineering:
   by restricting attention to the set of choices that are
   Pareto-efficient, a designer can make tradeoffs within this
   set, rather than considering the full range of every parameter.

One we view we are an optimal state right now where we don't wish to benefit one without making someone else worst and I see the two-step and RFC2119bis as attempts to making Pareto Frontier Efficient engineering decisions.

The question is always "how much" change we want without ignoring those that can be made worst off.

--

Keith Moore wrote:
On Sep 10, 2011, at 10:44 AM, Russ Housley wrote:

That said, at the plenary at IETF 81, Harald suggested that we have waited so 
long that incremental improvements may not be the right approach, rather it was 
time for 2026bis.  I agree that it is needed, but I am not sure the IETF 
community is willing to tackle a project of that size and complexity.

I suspect that there are two underlying problems, both significant.

1. Many people would see an attempt to change the process as a "threat" of one 
kind or another, feeling like the result of such change under current circumstances would 
likely be worse than the status quo.

2. There seems to be wide perceptual variation among IETF participants as to 
the organization's purpose and/or what's wrong with the current process.

I think there's a need for consensus-building around these two topics (and perhaps others) before even considering whether and how to revise 2026. In the first case, we need to find out what people see as threats and use that to bound the charter of the rewrite effort so that people won't feel like they have to be in damage control mode. But the second topic is even more important.
Keith




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